THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

RIVERSIDE 


POLITICAL 
IDEALS 


POLITICAL 
IDEALS 


BERTRAND  RUSSELL 

Author  of  "Why  Men  Fight,"  etc. 


NEW  YORK 

THE  CENTURY  CO. 

1917 


Copyright,  1917,  by 
THE  CENTURY  Co. 


Copyright,  1917,  by 

T»    NORTH    AllllBK  A»    RlTIIW   Co»l>U»ATlU» 


Published  September,  1917 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I    POLITICAL  IDEALS 3 

II    CAPITALISM  AND  THE  WAGE  SYSTEM    39 

III  PITFALLS  IN  SOCIALISM    ....     73 

IV  INDIVIDUAL    LIBERTY    AND    PUBLIC 

CONTROL 103 

V    NATIONAL  INDEPENDENCE  AND   IN- 
TERNATIONALISM .  145 


I 

POLITICAL  IDEALS 


POLITICAL  IDEALS 


POLITICAL,  IDEALS 

IN  dark  days,  men  need  a  clear  faith 
and  a  well-grounded  hope ;  and  as  the 
outcome  of  these,  the  calm  courage  which 
takes  no  account  of  hardships  by  the  way. 
The  times  through  which  we  are  pass- 
ing have  afforded  to  many  of  us  a  con- 
firmation of  our  faith.  We  see  that  the 
things  we  had  thought  evil  are  really  evil, 
and  we  know  more  definitely  than  we 
ever  did  before  the  directions  in  which 
men  must  move  if  a  better  world  is  to 
arise  on  the  ruins  of  the  one  which  is  now 
hurling  itself  into  destruction.  We  see 
that  men's  political  dealings  with  one  an- 
3 


POLITICAL  IDEALS 

other  are  based  on  wholly  wrong  ideals, 
and  can  only  be  saved  by  quite  different 
ideals  from  continuing  to  be  a  source  of 
suffering,  devastation,  and  sin. 

Political  ideals  must  be  based  upon 
ideals  for  the  individual  life.  The  aim 
of  politics  should  be  to  make  the  lives  of 
individuals  as  good  as  possible.  There 
is  nothing  for  the  politician  to  consider 
outside  or  above  the  various  men,  women, 
and  children  who  compose  the  world. 
The  problem  of  politics  is  to  adjust  the 
relations  of  human  beings  in  such  a  way 
that  each  severally  may  have  as  much  of 
good  in  his  existence  as  possible.  And 
this  problem  requires  that  we  should 
first  consider  what  it  is  that  we  think 
good  in  the  individual  life. 

To  begin  with,  we  do  not  want  all  men 

to  be  alike.    We  do  not  want  to  lay  down 

a  pattern  or  type  to  which  men  of  all 

sorts  are  to  be  made  by  some  means  or 

4 


POLITICAL  IDEALS 

another  to  approximate.  This  is  the 
ideal  of  the  impatient  administrator.  A 
bad  teacher  will  aim  at  imposing  his  opin- 
ion, and  turning  out  a  set  of  pupils  all 
of  whom  will  give  the  same  definite  an- 
swer on  a  doubtful  point.  Mr.  Bernard 
Shaw  is  said  to  hold  that  Troilus  and 
Cressida  is  the  best  of  Shakespeare's 
plays.  Although  I  disagree  with  this 
opinion,  I  should  welcome  it  in  a  pupil  as 
a  sign  of  individuality ;  but  most  teachers 
would  not  tolerate  such  a  heterodox 
view.  Not  only  teachers,  but  all  com- 
monplace persons  in  authority,  desire 
in  their  subordinates  that  kind  of  uni- 
formity which  makes  their  actions  eas- 
ily predictable  and  never  inconvenient. 
The  result  is  that  they  crush  initiative 
and  individuality  when  they  can,  and 
when  they  cannot,  they  quarrel  with  it. 
It  is  not  one  ideal  for  all  men,  but  a 
separate  ideal  for  each  separate  man, 
5 


POLITICAL  IDEALS 

that  has  to  be  realized  if  possible. 
Every  man  has  it  in  his  being  Co  develop 
into  something  good  or  bad:  there  is  a 
best  possible  for  him,  and  a  worst  possi- 
ble. His  circumstances  will  determine 
whether  his  capacities  for  good  are  de- 
veloped or  crushed,  and  whether  his  bad 
impulses  are  strengthened  or  gradually 
diverted  into  better  channels. 

But  although  we  cannot  set  up  in  any 
detail  an  ideal  of  character  which  is  to  be 
universally  applicable — although  we  can- 
not say,  for  instance,  that  all  men  ought 
to  be  industrious,  or  self-sacrificing,  or 
fond  of  music — there  are  some  broad 
principles  which  can  be  used  to  guide 
our  estimates  as  to  what  is  possible  or 
desirable. 

We    may    distinguish   two    sorts    of 

goods,  and  two  corresponding  sorts  of 

impulses.    There  are  goods  in  regard  to 

which  individual  possession  is  possible, 

6 


POLITICAL  IDEALS 

and  there  are  goods  in  which  all  can 
share  alike.  The  food  and  clothing  of 
one  man  is  not  the  food  and  clothing  of 
another;  if  the  supply  is  insufficient, 
what  one  man  has  is  obtained  at  the  ex- 
pense of  some  other  man.  This  applies 
to  material  goods  generally,  and  there- 
fore to  the  greater  part  of  the  present 
economic  life  of  the  world.  On  the  other 
hand,  mental  and  spiritual  goods  do  not 
belong  to  one  man  to  the  exclusion  of 
another.  If  one  man  knows  a  science, 
that  does  not  prevent  others  from  know- 
ing it ;  on  the  contrary,  it  helps  them  to 
acquire  the  knowledge.  If  one  man  is  a 
great  artist  or  poet,  that  does  not  pre- 
vent others  from  painting  pictures  or 
writing  poems,  but  helps  to  create  the 
atmosphere  in  which  such  things  are  pos- 
sible. If  one  man  is  full  of  good-will  to- 
ward others,  that  does  not  mean  that 
there  is  less  good-will  to  be  shared 
7 


POLITICAL  IDEALS 

among  the  rest;  the  more  good- will  one 
man  has,  the  more  he  is  likely  to  create 
among  others.  In  such  matters  there  is 
no  possession,  because  there  is  not  a 
definite  amount  to  be  shared;  any  in- 
crease anywhere  tends  to  produce  an 
increase  everywhere. 

There  are  two  kinds  of  impulses,  cor- 
responding to  the  two  kinds  of  goods. 
There  are  possessive  impulses,  which 
aim  at  acquiring  or  retaining  private 
goods  that  cannot  be  shared;  these  cen- 
ter in  the  impulse  of  property.  And 
there  are  creative  or  constructive  im- 
pulses, which  aim  at  bringing  into  the 
world  or  making  available  for  use  the 
kind  of  goods  in  which  there  is  no  pri- 
vacy and  no  possession. 

The  best  life  is  the  one  in  which  the 

creative  impulses  play  the  largest  part 

and  the  possessive  impulses  the  smallest. 

This  is  no  new  discovery.    The  Gospel 

8 


POLITICAL  IDEALS 

says:  "Take  no  thought,  saying,  What 
shall  we  eat?  or  What  shall  we  drink?  or, 
Wherewithal  shall  we  be  clothed  I ' '  The 
thought  we  give  to  these  things  is  taken 
away  from  matters  of  more  importance. 
And  what  is  worse,  the  habit  of  mind  en- 
gendered by  thinking  of  these  things  is  a 
bad  one;  it  leads  to  competition,  envy, 
domination,  cruelty,  and  almost  all  the 
moral  evils  that  infest  the  world.  In 
particular,  it  leads  to  the  predatory  use 
of  force.  Material  possessions  can  be 
taken  by  force  and  enjoyed  by  the  rob- 
ber. Spiritual  possessions  cannot  be 
taken  in  this  way.  You  may  kill  an  art- 
ist or  a  thinker,  but  you  cannot  acquire 
his  art  or  his  thought.  You  may  put  a 
man  to  death  because  he  loves  his  fellow- 
men,  but  you  will  not  by  so  doing  acquire 
the  love  which  made  his  happiness. 
Force  is  impotent  in  such  matters ;  it  is 
only  as  regards  material  goods  that  it  is 
9 


POLITICAL  IDEALS 

effective.  For  this  reason  the  men  who 
believe  in  force  are  the  men  whose 
thoughts  and  desires  are  preoccupied 
with  material  goods. 

The  possessive  impulses,  when  they 
are  strong,  infect  activities  which  ought 
to  be  purely  creative.  A  man  who  has 
made  some  valuable  discovery  may  be 
filled  with  jealousy  of  a  rival  discoverer. 
If  one  man  has  found  a  cure  for  can- 
cer and  another  has  found  a  cure  for  con- 
sumption, one  of  them  may  be  delighted 
if  the  other  man's  discovery  turns  out  a 
mistake,  instead  of  regretting  the  suf- 
fering of  patients  which  would  other- 
wise have  been  avoided.  In  such  cases, 
instead  of  desiring  knowledge  for  its  own 
sake,  or  for  the  sake  of  its  usefulness,  a 
man  is  desiring  it  as  a  means  to  reputa- 
tion. Every  creative  impulse  is  shad- 
owed by  a  possessive  impulse ;  even  the 
aspirant  to  saintliness  may  be  jealous 
10 


POLITICAL  IDEALS 

of  the  more  successful  saint.  Most  af- 
fection is  accompanied  by  some  tinge  of 
jealousy,  which  is  a  possessive  impulse 
intruding  into  the  creative  region. 
Worst  of  all,  in  this  direction,  is  the 
sheer  envy  of  those  who  have  missed 
everything  worth  having  in  life,  and  who 
are  instinctively  bent  on  preventing  oth- 
ers from  enjoying  what  they  have  not 
had.  There  is  often  much  of  this  in 
the  attitude  of  the  old  toward  the 
young. 

There  is  in  human  beings,  as  in  plants 
and  animals,  a  certain  natural  impulse 
of  growth,  and  this  is  just  as  true 
of  mental  as  of  physical  development. 
Physical  development  is  helped  by  air 
and  nourishment  and  exercise,  and  may 
be  hindered  by  the  sort  of  treatment 
which  made  Chinese  women's  feet  small. 
In  just  the  same  way  mental  develop- 
ment may  be  helped  or  hindered  by  out- 
11 


POLITICAL  IDEALS 

side  influences.  The  outside  influences 
that  help  are  those  that  merely  provide 
encouragement  or  mental  food  or  oppor- 
tunities for  exercising  mental  faculties. 
The  influences  that  hinder  are  those  that 
interfere  with  growth  by  applying  any 
kind  of  force,  whether  discipline  or  au- 
thority or  fear  or  the  tyranny  of  pub- 
lic opinion  or  the  necessity  of  engaging 
in  some  totally  incongenial  occupation. 
Worst  of  all  influences  are  those  that 
thwart  or  twist  a  man's  fundamental  im- 
pulse, which  is  what  shows  itself  as  con- 
science in  the  moral  sphere;  such  influ- 
ences are  likely  to  do  a  man  an  inward 
danger  from  which  he  will  never  recover. 
Those  who  realize  the  harm  that  can 
be  done  to  others  by  any  use  of  force 
against  them,  and  the  worthlessness  of 
the  goods  that  can  be  acquired  by  force, 
will  be  very  full  of  respect  for  the  liberty 
of  others ;  they  will  not  try  to  bind  them 
12 


POLITICAL  IDEALS 

or  fetter  them ;  they  will  be  slow  to  judge 
and  swift  to  sympathize ;  they  will  treat 
every  human  being  with  a  kind  of  ten- 
derness, because  the  principle  of  good  in 
him  is  at  once  fragile  and  infinitely 
precious.  They  will  not  condemn  those 
who  are  unlike  themselves;  they  will 
know  and  feel  that  individuality  brings 
differences  and  uniformity  means  death. 
They  will  wish  each  human  being  to  be  as 
much  a  living  thing  and  as  little  a  me- 
chanical product  as  it  is  possible  to  be; 
they  will  cherish  in  each  one  just  those 
things  which  the  harsh  usage  of  a  ruth- 
less world  would  destroy.  In  one  word, 
all  their  dealings  with  others  will  be  in- 
spired by  a  deep  impulse  of  reverence. 

What  we  shall  desire  for  individuals 
is  now  clear:  strong  creative  impulses, 
overpowering  and  absorbing  the  instinct 
of  possession;  reverence  for  others;  re- 
spect for  the  fundamental  creative  im- 
13 


POLITICAL  IDEALS 

pulse  in  ourselves.  A  certain  kind  of 
self-respect  or  native  pride  is  necessary 
to  a  good  life;  a  man  must  not  have  a 
sense  of  utter  inward  defeat  if  he  is  to 
remain  whole,  but  must  feel  the  courage 
and  the  hope  and  the  will  to  live  by  the 
best  that  is  in  him,  whatever  outward  or 
inward  obstacles  it  may  encounter.  So 
far  as  it  lies  in  a  man's  own  power,  his 
life  will  realize  its  best  possibilities  if  it 
has  three  things:  creative  rather  than 
possessive  impulses,  reverence  for  oth- 
ers, and  respect  for  the  fundamental  im- 
pulse in  himself. 

Political  and  social  institutions  are  to 
be  judged  by  the  good  or  harm  that  they 
do  to  individuals.  Do  they  encourage 
creativeness  rather  than  possessiveness  ? 
Do  they  embody  or  promote  a  spirit  of 
reverence  between  human  beings?  Do 
they  preserve  self-respect? 

In  all  these  ways  the  institutions  un- 
14 


POLITICAL  IDEALS 

der  which  we  live  are  very  far  indeed 
from  what  they  ought  to  be. 

Institutions,  and  especially  economic 
systems,  have  a  profound  influence  in 
molding  the  characters  of  men  and  wo- 
men. They  may  encourage  adventure 
and  hope,  or  timidity  and  the  pursuit  of 
safety.  They  may  open  men's  minds  to 
great  possibilities,  or  close  them  against 
everything  but  the  risk  of  obscure  mis- 
fortune. They  may  make  a  man's  hap- 
piness depend  upon  what  he  adds  to  the 
general  possessions  of  the  world,  or  upon 
what  he  can  secure  for  himself  of  the  pri- 
vate goods  in  which  others  cannot  share. 
Modern  capitalism  forces  the  wrong  de- 
cision of  these  alternatives  upon  all  who 
are  not  heroic  or  exceptionally  fortunate. 

Men's  impulses  are  molded,  partly  by 
their  native  disposition,  partly  by  op- 
portunity and  environment,  especially 
early  environment.  Direct  preaching 
15 


POLITICAL  IDEALS 

can  do  very  little  to  change  impulses, 
though  it  can  lead  people  to  restrain  the 
direct  expression  of  them,  often  with  the 
result  that  the  impulses  go  underground 
and  come  to  the  surface  again  in  some 
contorted  form.  When  we  have  discov- 
ered what  kinds  of  impulse  we  desire,  we 
must  not  rest  content  with  preaching,  or 
with  trying  to  produce  the  outward  man- 
ifestation without  the  inner  spring;  we 
must  try  rather  to  alter  institutions  in 
the  way  that  will,  of  itself,  modify  the  life 
of  impulse  in  the  desired  direction. 

At  present  our  institutions  rest  upon 
two  things:  property  and  power.  Both 
of  these  are  very  unjustly  distributed; 
both,  in  the  actual  world,  are  of  great  im- 
portance to  the  happiness  of  the  individ- 
ual. Both  are  possessive  goods;  yet 
without  them  many  of  the  goods  in  which 
all  might  share  are  hard  to  acquire  as 
things  are  now. 

16 


POLITICAL  IDEALS 

Without  property,  as  things  are,  a 
man  has  no  freedom,  and  no  security  for 
the  necessities  of  a  tolerable  life;  with- 
out power,  he  has  no  opportunity  for  in- 
itiative. If  men  are  to  have  free  play 
for  their  creative  impulses,  they  must  be 
liberated  from  sordid  cares  by  a  certain 
measure  of  security,  and  they  must  have 
a  sufficient  share  of  power  to  be  able  to 
exercise  initiative  as  regards  the  course 
and  conditions  of  their  lives. 

Few  men  can  succeed  in  being  creative 
rather  than  possessive  in  a  world  which 
is  wholly  built  on  competition,  where  the 
great  majority  would  fall  into  utter  des- 
titution if  they  became  careless  as  to 
the  acquisition  of  material  goods,  where 
honor  and  power  and  respect  are  given 
to  wealth  rather  than  to  wisdom,  where 
the  law  embodies  and  consecrates  the  in- 
justice of  those  who  have  toward  those 
who  have  not.  In  such  an  environment 
17 


POLITICAL  IDEALS 

even  those  whom  nature  has  endowed 
with  great  creative  gifts  become  infected 
with  the  poison  of  competition.  Men 
combine  in  groups  to  attain  more 
strength  in  the  scramble  for  material 
goods,  and  loyalty  to  the  group  spreads 
a  halo  of  quasi-idealism  round  the  cen- 
tral impulse  of  greed.  Trade-unions 
and  the  Labor  party  are  no  more  exempt 
from  this  vice  than  other  parties  and 
other  sections  of  society ;  though  they  are 
largely  inspired  by  the  hope  of  a  radi- 
cally better  world.  They  are  too  often 
led  astray  by  the  immediate  object  of 
securing  for  themselves  a  large  share  of 
material  goods.  That  this  desire  is  in 
accordance  with  justice,  it  is  impossible 
to  deny ;  but  something  larger  and  more 
constructive  is  needed  as  a  political 
ideal,  if  the  victors  of  to-morrow  are 
not  to  become  the  oppressors  of  the  day 
after.  The  inspiration  and  outcome  of  a 
18 


POLITICAL  IDEALS 

reforming  movement  ought  to  be  free- 
dom and  a  generous  spirit,  not  niggling 
restrictions  and  regulations. 

The  present  economic  system  concen- 
trates initiative  in  the  hands  of  a  small 
number  of  very  rich  men.  Those  who 
are  not  capitalists  have,  almost  always, 
very  little  choice  as  to  their  activities 
when  once  they  have  selected  a  trade  or 
profession;  they  are  not  part  of  the 
power  that  moves  the  mechanism,  but 
only  a  passive  portion  of  the  machinery. 
Despite  political  democracy,  there  is 
still  an  extraordinary  degree  of  differ- 
ence in  the  power  of  self-direction  be- 
longing to  a  capitalist  and  to  a  man  who 
has  to  earn  his  living.  Economic  af- 
fairs touch  men's  lives,  at  most  times, 
much  more  intimately  than  political 
questions.  At  present  the  man  who  has 
no  capital  usually  has  to  sell  himself  to 
some  large  organization,  such  as  a  rail- 
19 


POLITICAL  IDEALS 

way  company,  for  example.  He  has  no 
voice  in  its  management,  and  no  liberty 
in  politics  except  what  his  trade-union 
can  secure  for  him.  If  he  happens  to 
desire  a  form  of  liberty  which  is  not 
thought  important  by  his  trade-union,  he 
is  powerless ;  he  must  submit  or  starve. 
Exactly  the  same  thing  happens  to 
professional  men.  Probably  a  majority 
of  journalists  are  engaged  in  writing  for 
newspapers  whose  politics  they  disagree 
with;  only  a  man  of  wealth  can  own  a 
large  newspaper,  and  only  an  accident 
can  enable  the  point  of  view  or  the  in- 
terests of  those  who  are  not  wealthy  to 
find  expression  in  a  newspaper.  A  large 
part  of  the  best  brains  of  the  country 
are  in  the  civil  service,  where  the  condi- 
tion of  their  employment  is  silence  about 
the  evils  which  cannot  be  concealed  from 
them.  A  Nonconformist  minister  loses 
his  livelihood  if  his  views  displease  his 
20 


POLITICAL  IDEALS 

congregation;  a  member  of  Parliament 
loses  his  seat  if  he  is  not  sufficiently 
supple  or  sufficiently  stupid  to  follow  or 
share  all  the  turns  and  twists  of  public 
opinion.  In  every  walk  of  life,  inde- 
pendence of  mind  is  punished  by  failure, 
more  and  more  as  economic  organiza- 
tions grow  larger  and  more  rigid.  Is  it 
surprising  that  men  become  increasingly 
docile,  increasingly  ready  to  submit  to 
dictation  and  to  forego  the  right  of 
thinking  for  themselves?  Yet  along 
such  lines  civilization  can  only  sink  into 
a  Byzantine  immobility. 

Fear  of  destitution  is  not  a  motive  out 
of  which  a  free  creative  life  can  grow, 
yet  it  is  the  chief  motive  which  inspires 
the  daily  work  of  most  wage-earners. 
The  hope  of  possessing  more  wealth  and 
power  than  any  man  ought  to  have,  which 
is  the  corresponding  motive  of  the  rich, 
is  quite  as  bad  in  its  effects ;  it  compels 
21 


POLITICAL  IDEALS 

men  to  close  their  minds  against  jus- 
tice, and  to  prevent  themselves  from 
thinking  honestly  on  social  questions, 
while  in  the  depths  of  their  hearts  they 
uneasily  feel  that  their  pleasures  are 
bought  by  the  miseries  of  others.  The 
injustices  of  destitution  and  wealth 
alike  ought  to  be  rendered  impossible. 
Then  a  great  fear  would  be  removed 
from  the  lives  of  the  many,  and  hope 
would  have  to  take  on  a  better  form  in 
the  lives  of  the  few. 

But  security  and  liberty  are  only  the 
negative  conditions  for  good  political  in- 
stitutions. When  they  have  been  won, 
we  need  also  the  positive  condition:  en- 
couragement of  creative  energy.  Secur- 
ity alone  might  produce  a  smug  and  sta- 
tionary society;  it  demands  creativeness 
as  its  counterpart,  in  order  to  keep  alive 
the  adventure  and  interest  of  life,  and 
the  movement  toward  perpetually  new 
22 


POLITICAL  IDEALS 

and  better  things.  There  can  be  no  final 
goal  for  human  institutions ;  the  best  are 
those  that  most  encourage  progress  to- 
ward others  still  better.  Without  ef- 
fort and  change,  human  life  cannot  re- 
main good.  It  is  not  a  finished  Utopia 
that  we  ought  to  desire,  but  a  world 
where  imagination  and  hope  are  alive 
and  active. 

It  is  a  sad  evidence  of  the  weariness 
mankind  has  suffered  from  excessive 
toil  that  his  heavens  have  usually  been 
places  where  nothing  ever  happened  or 
changed.  Fatigue  produces  the  illusion 
that  only  rest  is  needed  for  happiness; 
but  when  men  have  rested  for  a  time, 
boredom  drives  them  to  renewed  activ- 
ity. For  this  reason,  a  happy  life  must 
be  one  in  which  there  is  activity. 
If  it  is  also  to  be  a  useful  life,  the 
activity  ought  to  be  as  far  as  possible 
creative,  not  merely  predatory  or  de- 
23 


POLITICAL  IDEALS 

fensive.  But  creative  activity  requires 
imagination  and  originality,  which  are 
apt  to  be  subversive  of  the  status  quo. 
At  present,  those  who  have  power  dread 
a  disturbance  of  the  status  quo,  lest  their 
unjust  privileges  should  be  taken  away. 
In  combination  with  the  instinct  for  con- 
ventionality,1 which  man  shares  with  the 
other  gregarious  animals,  those  who 
profit  by  the  existing  order  have  estab- 
lished a  system  which  punishes  origin- 
ality and  starves  imagination  from  the 
moment  of  first  going  to  school  down  to 
the  time  of  death  and  burial.  The  whole 
spirit  in  which  education  is  conducted 
needs  to  be  changed,  in  order  that  chil- 
dren may  be  encouraged  to  think  and 
feel  for  themselves,  not  to  acquiesce  pas- 
sively in  the  thoughts  and  feelings  of 
others.  It  is  not  rewards  after  the  event 
that  will  produce  initiative,  but  a  certain 

i  In  England  this  is  called  "a  sense  of  humor." 

24 


POLITICAL  IDEALS 

mental  atmosphere.  There  have  been 
times  when  such  an  atmosphere  existed : 
the  great  days  of  Greece,  and  Eliza- 
bethan England,  may  serve  as  examples. 
But  in  our  own  day  the  tyranny  of  vast 
machine-like  organizations,  governed 
from  above  by  men  who  know  and  care 
little  for  the  lives  of  those  whom  they 
control,  is  killing  individuality  and  free- 
dom of  mind,  and  forcing  men  more  and 
more  to  conform  to  a  uniform  pattern. 

Vast  organizations  are  an  inevitable 
element  in  modern  life,  and  it  is  useless 
to  aim  at  their  abolition,  as  has  been 
done  by  some  reformers,  for  instance, 
William  Morris.  It  is  true  that  they 
make  the  preservation  of  individuality 
more  difficult,  but  what  is  needed  is  a 
way  of  combining  them  with  the  great- 
est possible  scope  for  individual  initia- 
tive. 

One  very  important  step  toward  this 
25 


POLITICAL  IDEALS 

end  would  be  to  render  democratic  the 
government  of  every  organization.  At 
present,  our  legislative  institutions  are 
more  or  less  democratic,  except  for  the 
important  fact  that  women  are  excluded. 
But  our  administration  is  still  purely 
bureaucratic,  and  our  economic  organi- 
zations are  monarchical  or  oligarchic. 
Every  limited  liability  company  is  run 
by  a  small  number  of  self-appointed  or 
coopted  directors.  There  can  be  no  real 
freedom  or  democracy  until  the  men  who 
do  the  work  in  a  business  also  control 
its  management. 

Another  measure  which  would  do  much 
to  increase  liberty  would  be  an  increase 
of  self-government  for  subordinate 
groups,  whether  geographical  or  eco- 
nomic or  denned  by  some  common  be- 
lief, like  religious  sects.  A  modern  state 
is  so  vast  and  its  machinery  is  so  little 
understood  that  even  when  a  man  has 
26 


POLITICAL  IDEALS 

a  vote  he  does  not  feel  himself  any  ef- 
fective part  of  the  force  which  deter- 
mines its  policy.  Except  in  matters 
where  he  can  act  in  conjunction  with  an 
exceptionally  powerful  group,  he  feels 
himself  almost  impotent,  and  the  govern- 
ment remains  a  remote  impersonal  cir- 
cumstance, which  must  be  simply  en- 
dured, like  the  weather.  By  a  share  in 
the  control  of  smaller  bodies,  a  man 
might  regain  some  of  that  sense  of  per- 
sonal opportunity  and  responsibility 
which  belonged  to  the  citizen  of  a  city- 
state  in  ancient  Greece  or  medieval 
Italy. 

When  any  group  of  men  has  a  strong 
corporate  consciousness — such  as  be- 
longs, for  example,  to  a  nation  or  a  trade 
or  a  religious  body — liberty  demands 
that  it  should  be  free  to  decide  for  itself 
all  matters  which  are  of  great  impor- 
tance to  the, outside  world.  This  is  the 
27 


POLITICAL  IDEALS 

basis  of  the  universal  claim  for  national 
independence.  But  nations  are  by  no 
means  the  only  groups  which  ought  to 
have  self-government  for  their  internal 
concerns.  And  nations,  like  other 
groups,  ought  not  to  have  complete  lib- 
erty of  action  in  matters  which  are  of 
equal  concern  to  foreign  nations.  Lib- 
erty demands  self-government,  but  not 
the  right  to  interfere  with  others.  The 
greatest  degree  of  liberty  is  not  secured 
by  anarchy.  The  reconciliation  of  lib- 
erty with  government  is  a  difficult  prob- 
lem, but  it  is  one  which  any  political 
theory  must  face. 

The  essence  of  government  is  the  use 
of  force  in  accordance  with  law  to  secure 
certain  ends  which  the  holders  of  power 
consider  desirable.  The  coercion  of  an 
individual  or  a  group  by  force  is  always 
in  itself  more  or  less  harmful.  But  if 
there  were  no  government,  the  result 
28 


POLITICAL  IDEALS 

would  not  be  an  absence  of  force  in  men's 
relations  to  each  other ;  it  would  merely 
be  the  exercise  of  force  by  those  who 
had  strong  predatory  instincts,  necessi- 
tating either  slavery  or  a  perpetual  read- 
iness to  repel  force  with  force  on  the  part 
of  those  whose  instincts  were  less  vio- 
lent. This  is  the  state  of  affairs  at  pres- 
ent in  international  relations,  owing  to 
the  fact  that  no  international  govern- 
ment exists.  The  results  of  anarchy  be- 
tween states  should  suffice  to  persuade 
us  that  anarchism  has  no  solution  to 
offer  for  the  evils  of  the  world. 

There  is  probably  one  purpose,  and 
only  one,  for  which  the  use  of  force  by  a 
government  is  beneficent,  and  that  is  to 
diminish  the  total  amount  of  force  used 
in  the  world.  It  is  clear,  for  example, 
that  the  legal  prohibition  of  murder 
diminishes  the  total  amount  of  violence 
in  the  world.  And  no  one  would  maintain 
29 


POLITICAL  IDEALS 

that  parents  should  have  unlimited  free- 
dom to  ill-treat  their  children.  So  long 
as  some  men  wish  to  do  violence  to  oth- 
ers, there  cannot  be  complete  liberty,  for 
either  the  wish  to  do  violence  must  be 
restrained,  or  the  victims  must  be  left  to 
suffer.  For  this  reason,  although  indi- 
viduals and  societies  should  have  the 
utmost  freedom  as  regards  their  own 
affairs,  they  ought  not  to  have  complete 
freedom  as  regards  their  dealings  with 
others.  To  give  freedom  to  the  strong 
to  oppress  the  weak  is  not  the  way  to 
secure  the  greatest  possible  amount  of 
freedom  in  the  world.  This  is  the  basis 
of  the  socialist  revolt  against  the  kind 
of  freedom  which  used  to  be  advocated 
by  laissez-faire  economists. 

Democracy  is  a  device — the  best  so  far 

invented — for  diminishing  as  much  as 

possible  the  interference  of  governments 

with  liberty.    If  a  nation  is  divided  into 

30 


POLITICAL  IDEALS 

two  sections  which  cannot  both  have 
their  way,  democracy  theoretically  in- 
sures that  the  majority  shall  have  their 
way.  But  democracy  is  not  at  all  an  ad- 
equate device  unless  it  is  accompanied 
by  a  very  great  amount  of  devolution. 
Love  of  uniformity,  or  the  mere  pleasure 
o-f  interfering,  or  dislike  of  differing 
tastes  and  temperaments,  may  often  lead 
a  majority  to  control  a  minority  in  mat- 
ters which  do  not  really  concern  the  ma- 
jority. We  should  none  of  us  like  to 
have  the  internal  affairs  of  Great  Britain 
settled  by  a  parliament  of  the  world,  if 
ever  such  a  body  came  into  existence. 
Nevertheless,  there  are  matters  which 
such  a  body  could  settle  much  better 
than  any  existing  instrument  of  govern- 
ment. 

The  theory  of  the  legitimate  use  of 
force  in  human  affairs,  where  a  govern- 
ment exists,  seems  clear.    Force  should 
31 


POLITICAL  IDEALS 

only  be  used  against  those  who  attempt 
to  use  force  against  others,  or  against 
those  who  will  not  respect  the  law  in 
cases  where  a  common  decision  is  neces- 
sary and  a  minority  are  opposed  to  the 
action  of  the  majority.  These  seem  legit- 
imate occasions  for  the  use  of  force ;  and 
they  should  be  legitimate  occasions  in  in- 
ternational affairs,  if  an  international 
government  existed.  The  problem  of  the 
legitimate  occasions  for  the  use  of  force 
in  the  absence  of  a  government  is  a  dif- 
ferent one,  with  which  we  are  not  at  pres- 
ent concerned. 

Although  a  government  must  have  the 
power  to  use  force,  and  may  on  occasion 
use  it  legitimately,  the  aim  of  the  reform- 
ers to  have  such  institutions  as  will 
diminish  the  need  for  actual  coercion 
will  be  found  to  have  this  effect.  Most 
of  us  abstain,  for  instance,  from  theft, 
not  because  it  is  illegal,  but  be- 
32 


POLITICAL  IDEALS 

cause  we  feel  no  desire  to  steal.  The 
more  men  learn  to  live  creatively  rather 
than  possessively,  the  less  their  wishes 
will  lead  them  to  thwart  others  or  to  at- 
tempt violent  interference  with  their  lib- 
erty. Most  of  the  conflicts  of  interests, 
which  lead  individuals  or  organizations 
into  disputes,  are  purely  imaginary,  and 
would  be  seen  to  be  so  if  men  aimed  more 
at  the  goods  in  which  all  can  share,  and 
less  at  those  private  possessions  that 
are  the  source  of  strife.  In  proportion 
as  men  live  creatively,  they  cease  to  wish 
to  interfere  with  others  by  force.  Very 
many  matters  in  which,  at  present,  com- 
mon action  is  thought  indispensable, 
might  well  be  left  to  individual  decision. 
It  used  to  be  thought  absolutely  neces- 
sary that  all  the  inhabitants  of  a  coun- 
try should  have  the  same  religion,  but  we 
now  know  that  there  is  no  such  necessity. 
In  like  manner  it  will  be  found,  as  men 
33 


POLITICAL  IDEALS 

grow  more  tolerant  in  their  instincts, 
that  many  uniformities  now  insisted 
upon  are  useless  and  even  harmful. 

Good  political  institutions  would 
weaken  the  impulse  toward  force  and 
domination  in  two  ways:  first,  by  in- 
creasing the  opportunities  for  the  crea- 
tive impulses,  and  by  shaping  education 
so  as  to  strengthen  these  impulses;  sec- 
ondly, by  diminishing  the  outlets  for  the 
possessive  instincts.  The  diffusion  of 
power,  both  in  the  political  and  the  eco- 
nomic sphere,  instead  of  its  concentra- 
tion in  the  hands  of  officials  and  captains 
of  industry,  would  greatly  diminish  the 
opportunities  for  acquiring  the  habit  of 
command,  out  of  which  the  desire  for 
exercising  tyranny  is  apt  to  spring.  Au- 
tonomy, both  for  districts  and  for  or- 
ganizations, would  leave  fewer  occasions 
when  governments  were  called  upon  to 
make  decisions  as  to  other  people's  con- 
34 


POLITICAL  IDEALS 

cerns.  And  the  abolition  of  capitalism 
and  the  wage  system  would  remove  the 
chief  incentive  to  fear  and  greed,  those 
correlative  passions  by  which  all  free 
life  is  choked  and  gagged. 

Few  men  seem  to  realize  how  many  of 
the  evils  from  which  we  suffer  are  wholly 
unnecessary,  and  that  they  could  be  abol- 
ished by  a  united  effort  within  a  few 
years.  If  a  majority  in  every  civilized 
country  so  desired,  we  could,  within 
twenty  years,  abolish  all  abject  poverty, 
quite  half  the  illness  in  the  world,  the 
whole  economic  slavery  which  binds 
down  nine  tenths  of  our  population;  we 
could  fill  the  world  with  beauty  and  joy, 
and  secure  the  reign  of  universal  peace. 
It  is  only  because  men  are  apathetic  that 
this  is  not  achieved,  only  because  imag- 
ination is  sluggish,  and  what  always  has 
been  is  regarded  as  what  always  must  be. 
With  good-will,  generosity,  intelligence, 
these  things  could  be  brought  about. 
35 


II 

CAPITALISM  AND  THE  WAGE 
SYSTEM 


n 

CAPITALISM   AND   THE   WAGE  SYSTEM 


THE  world  is  full  of  preventible  evils 
which  most  men  would  be  glad  to 
see  prevented. 

Nevertheless,  these  evils  persist,  and 
nothing  effective  is  done  toward  abol- 
ishing them. 

This  paradox  produces  astonishment 
in  inexperienced  reformers,  and  too  of- 
ten produces  disillusionment  in  those 
who  have  come  to  know  the  difficulty  of 
changing  human  institutions. 

War  is  recognized  as  an  evil  by  an 
immense  majority  in  every  civilized 
country;  but  this  recognition  does  not 
prevent  war. 

39 


CAPITALISM 

The  unjust  distribution  of  wealth  must 
be  obviously  an  evil  to  those  who  are 
not  prosperous,  and  they  are  nine  tenths 
of  the  population.  Nevertheless  it  con- 
tinues unabated. 

The  tyranny  of  the  holders  of  power  is 
a  source  of  needless  suffering  and  mis- 
fortune to  very  large  sections  of  man- 
kind; but  power  remains  in  few  hands, 
and  tends,  if  anything,  to  grow  more  con- 
centrated. 

I  wish  first  to  study  the  evils  of  our 
present  institutions,  and  the  causes  of 
the  very  limited  success  of  reformers  in 
the  past,  and  then  to  suggest  reasons 
for  the  hope  of  a  more  lasting  and  per- 
manent success  in  the  near  future. 

The  war  has  come  as  a  challenge  to  all 
who  desire  a  better  world.  The  system 
which  cannot  save  mankind  from  such  an 
appalling  disaster  is  at  fault  somewhere, 
and  cannot  be  amended  in  any  lasting 
40 


CAPITALISM 

way  unless  the  danger  of  great  wars  in 
the  future  can  be  made  very  small. 

But  war  is  only  the  final  flower  of  an 
evil  tree.  Even  in  times  of  peace,  most 
men  live  lives  of  monotonous  labor, 
most  women  are  condemned  to  a  drudg- 
ery which  almost  kills  the  possibility  of 
happiness  before  youth  is  past,  most 
children  are  allowed  to  grow  up  in  ig- 
norance of  all  that  would  enlarge  their 
thoughts  or  stimulate  their  imagination. 
The  few  who  are  more  fortunate  are  ren- 
dered illiberal  by  their  unjust  privileges, 
and  oppressive  through  fear  of  the  awak- 
ening indignation  of  the  masses.  From 
the  highest  to  the  lowest,  almost  all  men 
are  absorbed  in  the  economic  struggle: 
the  struggle  to  acquire  what  is  their  due 
or  to  retain  what  is  not  their  due.  Ma- 
terial possessions,  in  fact  or  in  desire, 
dominate  our  outlook,  usually  to  the  ex- 
clusion of  all  generous  and  creative  im- 
41 


CAPITALISM 

pulses.  Possessiveness — the  passion  to 
have  and  to  hold — is  the  ultimate  source 
of  war,  and  the  foundation  of  all  the  ills 
from  which  the  political  world  is  suffer- 
ing. Only  by  diminishing  the  strength 
of  this  passion  and  its  hold  upon  our 
daily  lives  can  new  institutions  bring 
permanent  benefit  to  mankind. 

Institutions  which  will  diminish  the 
sway  of  greed  are  possible,  but  only 
through  a  complete  reconstruction  of  our 
whole  economic  system.  Capitalism  and 
the  wage  system  must  be  abolished; 
they  are  twin  monsters  which  are  eating 
up  the  life  of  the  world.  In  place  of 
them  we  need  a  system  which  will  hold 
in  check  men's  predatory  impulses,  and 
will  diminish  the  economic  injustice  that 
allows  some  to  be  rich  in  idleness  while 
others  are  poor  in  spite  of  unremitting 
labor;  but  above  all  we  need  a  system 
which  will  destroy  the  tyranny  of  the 
42 


CAPITALISM 

employer,  by  making  men  at  the  same 
time  secure  against  destitution  and  able 
to  find  scope  for  individual  initiative  in 
the  control  of  the  industry  by  which  they 
live.  A  better  system  can  do  all  these 
things,  and  can  be  established  by  the 
democracy  whenever  it  grows  weary  of 
enduring  evils  which  there  is  no  reason 
to  endure. 

We  may  distinguish  four  purposes  at 
which  an  economic  system  may  aim: 
first,  it  may  aim  at  the  greatest  possible 
production  of  goods  and  at  facilitating 
technical  progress ;  second,  it  may  aim  at 
securing  distributive  justice;  third,  it 
may  aim  at  giving  security  against  desti- 
tution; and,  fourth,  it  may  aim  at  liber- 
ating creative  impulses  and  diminishing 
possessive  impulses. 

Of  these  four  purposes  the  last  is  the 
most  important.  Security  is  chiefly  im- 
portant as  a  means  to  it.  State  social- 
43 


CAPITALISM 

ism,  though  it  might  give  material  secur- 
ity and  more  justice  than  we  have  at 
present,  would  probably  fail  to  liberate 
creative  impulses  or  produce  a  progress- 
ive society. 

Our  present  system  fails  in  all  four 
purposes.  It  is  chiefly  defended  on  the 
ground  that  it  achieves  the  first  of  the 
four  purposes,  namely,  the  greatest  pos- 
sible production  of  material  goods,  but  it 
only  does  this  in  a  very  short-sighted 
way,  by  methods  which  are  wasteful  in 
the  long  run  both  of  human  material  and 
of  natural  resources. 

Capitalistic  enterprise  involves  a  ruth- 
less belief  in  the  importance  of  increas- 
ing material  production  to  the  utmost 
possible  extent  now  and  in  the  immedi- 
ate future.  In  obedience  to  this  belief, 
new  portions  of  the  earth's  surface  are 
continually  brought  under  the  sway  of 
industrialism.  Vast  tracts  of  Africa 
44 


CAPITALISM 

become  recruiting  grounds  for  the  labor 
required  in  the  gold  and  diamond  mines 
of  the  Rand,  Rhodesia,  and  Kimberley; 
for  this  purpose,  the  population  is  de- 
moralized, taxed,  driven  into  revolt,  and 
exposed  to  the  contamination  of  Euro- 
pean vice  and  disease.  Healthy  and  vig- 
orous races  from  Southern  Europe  are 
tempted  to  America,  where  sweating  and 
slum  life  reduce  their  vitality  if  they  do 
not  actually  cause  their  death.  What 
damage  is  done  to  our  own  urban  popu- 
lations by  the  conditions  under  which 
they  live,  we  all  know.  And  what  is  true 
of  the  human  riches  of  the  world  is  no 
less  true  of  the  physical  resources.  The 
mines,  forests,  and  wheat-fields  of  the 
world  are  all  being  exploited  at  a  rate 
which  must  practically  exhaust  them  at 
no  distant  date.  On  the  side  of  ma- 
terial production,  the  world  is  living  too 
fast ;  in  a  kind  of  delirium,  almost  all  the 
45 


CAPITALISM 

energy  of  the  world  has  rushed  into  the 
immediate  production  of  something,  no 
matter  what,  and  no  matter  at  what  cost. 
And  yet  our  present  system  is  defended 
on  the  ground  that  it  safeguards  prog- 
ress! 

It  cannot  be  said  that  our  present 
economic  system  is  any  more  successful 
in  regard  to  the  other  three  objects  which 
ought  to  be  aimed  at.  Among  the  many 
obvious  evils  of  capitalism  and  the  wage 
system,  none  are  more  glaring  than  that 
they  encourage  predatory  instincts,  that 
they  allow  economic  injustice,  and  that 
they  give  great  scope  to  the  tyranny  of 
the  employer. 

As  to  predatory  instincts,  we  may  say, 
broadly  speaking,  that  in  a  state  of  na- 
ture there  would  be  two  ways  of  acquir- 
ing riches — one  by  production,  the  other 
by  robbery.  Under  our  existing  system, 
although  what  is  recognized  as  robbery 
46 


CAPITALISM 

is  forbidden,  there  are  nevertheless  many 
ways  of  becoming  rich  without  contribut- 
ing anything  to  the  wealth  of  the  com- 
munity. Ownership  of  land  or  capital, 
whether  acquired  or  inherited,  gives  a 
legal  right  to  a  permanent  income.  Al- 
though most  people  have  to  produce  in 
order  to  live,  a  privileged  minority  are 
able  to  live  in  luxury  without  producing 
anything  at  all.  As  these  are  the  men 
who  are  not  only  the  most  fortunate  but 
also  the  most  respected,  there  is  a  gen- 
eral desire  to  enter  their  ranks,  and  a 
widespread  unwillingness  to  face  the  fact 
that  there  is  no  justification  whatever  for 
incomes  derived  in  this  way.  And  apart 
from  the  passive  enjoyment  of  rent  or 
interest,  the  methods  of  acquiring  wealth 
are  very  largely  predatory.  It  is  not, 
as  a  rule,  by  means  of  useful  inventions, 
or  of  any  other  action  which  increases 
the  general  wealth  of  the  community, 
47 


CAPITALISM 

that  men  amass  fortunes ;  it  is  much  more 
often  by  skill  in  exploiting  or  circum- 
venting others.  Nor  is  it  only  among 
the  rich  that  our  present  regime  pro- 
motes a  narrowly  acquisitive  spirit. 
The  constant  risk  of  destitution  compels 
most  men  to  fill  a  great  part  of  their 
time  and  thought  with  the  economic 
struggle.  There  is  a  theory  that  this 
increases  the  total  output  of  wealth  by 
the  community.  But  for  reasons  to 
which  I  shall  return  later,  I  believe  this 
theory  to  be  wholly  mistaken. 

Economic  injustice  is  perhaps  the  most 
obvious  evil  of  our  present  system.  It 
would  be  utterly  absurd  to  maintain  that 
the  men  who  inherit  great  wealth  de- 
serve better  of  the  community  than  those 
who  have  to  work  for  their  living.  I  am 
not  prepared  to  maintain  that  economic 
justice  requires  an  exactly  equal  income 
for  everybody.  Some  kinds  of  work  re- 
48 


CAPITALISM 

quire  a  larger  income  for  efficiency  than 
others  do;  but  there  is  economic  injus- 
tice as  soon  as  a  man  has  more  than  his 
share,  unless  it  is  because  his  efficiency 
in  his  work  requires  it,  or  as  a  reward 
for  some  definite  service.  But  this  point 
is  so  obvious  that  it  needs  no  elaboration. 
The  modern  growth  of  monopolies  in 
the  shape  of  trusts,  cartels,  federations 
of  employers  and  so  on  has  greatly  in- 
creased the  power  of  the  capitalist  to 
levy  toll  on  the  community.  This  tend- 
ency will  not  cease  of  itself,  but  only 
through  definite  action  on  the  part  of 
those  who  do  not  profit  by  the  capitalist 
regime.  Unfortunately  the  distinction 
between  the  proletariat  and  the  capitalist 
is  not  so  sharp  as  it  was  in  the  minds 
of  socialist  theorizers.  Trade-unions 
have  funds  in  various  securities; 
friendly  societies  are  large  capitalists; 
and  many  individuals  eke  out  their 
49 


CAPITALISM 

wages  by  invested  savings.  All  this  in- 
creases the  difficulty  of  any  clear-cut  rad- 
ical change  in  our  economic  system. 
But  it  does  not  diminish  the  desirability 
of  such  a  change. 

Such  a  system  as  that  suggested  by 
the  French  syndicalists,  in  which  each 
trade  would  be  self-governing  and  com- 
pletely independent,  without  the  control 
of  any  central  authority,  would  not  se- 
cure economic  justice.  Some  trades  are 
in  a  much  stronger  bargaining  position 
than  others.  Coal  and  transport,  for 
example,  could  paralyze  the  national 
life,  and  could  levy  blackmail  by  threat- 
ening to  do  so.  On  the  other  hand,  such 
people  as  school  teachers,  for  example, 
could  rouse  very  little  terror  by  the 
threat  of  a  strike  and  would  be  in  a  very 
weak  bargaining  position.  Justice  can 
never  be  secured  by  any  system  of  un- 
restrained force  exercised  by  interested 
50 


CAPITALISM 

parties  in  their  own  interests.  For  this 
reason  the  abolition  of  the  state,  which 
the  syndicalists  seem  to  desire,  would  be 
a  measure  not  compatible  with  economic 
justice. 

The  tyranny  of  the  employer,  which  at 
present  robs  the  greater  part  of  most 
men's  lives  of  all  liberty  and  all  initia- 
tive, is  unavoidable  so  long  as  the  em- 
ployer retains  the  right  of  dismissal  with 
consequent  loss  of  pay.  This  right  is 
supposed  to  be  essential  in  order  that 
men  may  have  an  incentive  to  work  thor- 
oughly. But  as  men  grow  more  civil- 
ized, incentives  based  on  hope  become  in- 
creasingly preferable  to  those  that  are 
based  on  fear.  It  would  be  far  better 
that  men  should  be  rewarded  for  work- 
ing well  than  that  they  should  be  pun- 
ished for  working  badly.  This  system 
is  already  in  operation  in  the  civil  serv- 
ice, where  a  man  is  only  dismissed  for 
51 


CAPITALISM 

some  exceptional  degree  of  vice  or  vir- 
tue, such  as  murder  or  illegal  abstention 
from  it.  Sufficient  pay  to  ensure  a  live- 
lihood ought  to  be  given  to  every  person 
who  is  willing  to  work,  independently  of 
the  question  whether  the  particular  work 
at  which  he  is  skilled  is  wanted  at  the 
moment  or  not.  If  it  is  not  wanted, 
some  new  trade  which  is  wanted  ought 
to  be  taught  at  the  public  expense.  Why, 
for  example,  should  a  hansom-cab 
driver  be  allowed  to  suffer  on  account  of 
the  introduction  of  taxies?  He  has  not 
committed  any  crime,  and  the  fact  that 
his  work  is  no  longer  wanted  is  due  to 
causes  entirely  outside  his  control.  In- 
stead of  being  allowed  to  starve,  he 
ought  to  be  given  instruction  in  motor 
driving  or  in  whatever  other  trade  may 
seem  most  suitable.  At  present,  owing 
to  the  fact  that  all  industrial  changes 
tend  to  cause  hardships  to  some  section 
52 


CAPITALISM 

of  wage-earners,  there  is  a  tendency  to 
technical  conservatism  on  the  part  of 
labor,  a  dislike  of  innovations,  new 
processes,  and  new  methods.  But  such 
changes,  if  they  are  in  the  permanent  in- 
terest of  the  community,  ought  to  be  car- 
ried out  without  allowing  them  to  bring 
unmerited  loss  to  those  sections  of  the 
community  whose  labor  is  no  longer 
wanted  in  the  old  form.  The  instinctive 
conservatism  of  mankind  is  sure  to  make 
all  processes  of  production  change  more 
slowly  than  they  should.  It  is  a  pity  to 
add  to  this  by  the  avoidable  conserva- 
tism which  is  forced  upon  organized 
labor  at  present  through  the  unjust 
workings  of  a  change. 

It  will  be  said  that  men  will  not  work 
well  if  the  fear  of  dismissal  does  not 
spur  them  on.  I  think  it  is  only  a  small 
percentage  of  whom  this  would  be  true 
at  present.  And  those  of  whom  it  would 
53 


CAPITALISM 

be  true  might  easily  become  industrious 
if  they  were  given  more  congenial  work 
or  a  wiser  training.  The  residue  who 
cannot  be  coaxed  into  industry  by  any 
such  methods  are  probably  to  be  re- 
garded as  pathological  cases,  requiring 
medical  rather  than  penal  treatment. 
And  against  this  residue  must  be  set  the 
very  much  larger  number  who  are  now 
ruined  in  health  or  in  morale  by  the  ter- 
rible uncertainty  of  their  livelihood  and 
the  great  irregularity  of  their  employ- 
ment. To  very  many,  security  would 
bring  a  quite  new  possibility  of  physical 
and  moral  health. 

The  most  dangerous  aspect  of  the  tyr- 
anny of  the  employer  is  the  power 
which  it  gives  him  of  interfering  with 
men's  activities  outside  their  working 
hours.  A  man  may  be  dismissed  be- 
cause the  employer  dislikes  his  religion 
or  his  politics,  or  chooses  to  think  his 
54 


CAPITALISM 

private  life  immoral.  He  may  be  dis- 
missed because  he  tries  to  produce 
a  spirit  of  independence  among  his 
fellow  employees.  He  may  fail  com- 
pletely to  find  employment  merely  on 
the  ground  that  he  is  better  edu- 
cated than  most  and  therefore  more 
dangerous.  Such  cases  actually  oc- 
cur at  present.  This  evil  would  not 
be  remedied,  but  rather  intensified,  under 
state  socialism,  because,  where  the  State 
is  the  only  employer,  there  is  no  refuge 
from  its  prejudices  such  as  may  now  ac- 
cidentally arise  through  the  differing 
opinions  of  different  men.  The  State 
would  be  able  to  enforce  any  system  of 
beliefs  it  happened  to  like,  and  it  is  al- 
most certain  that  it  would  do  so.  Free- 
dom of  thought  would  be  penalized,  and 
all  independence  of  spirit  would  die  out. 
Any  rigid  system  would  involve  this 
evil.  It  is  very  necessary  that  there 
55 


CAPITALISM 

should  be  diversity  and  lack  of  complete 
systematization.  Minorities  must  be 
able  to  live  and  develop  their  opinions 
freely.  If  this  is  not  secured,  the  in- 
stinct of  persecution  and  conformity  will 
force  all  men  into  one  mold  and  make 
all  vital  progress  impossible. 

For  these  reasons,  no  one  ought  to  be 
allowed  to  suffer  destitution  so  long  as 
he  or  she  is  willing  to  work.  And  no 
kind  of  inquiry  ought  to  be  made  into 
opinion  or  private  life.  It  is  only  on 
this  basis  that  it  is  possible  to  build  up 
an  economic  system  not  founded  upon 
tyranny  and  terror. 

ii 

The  power  of  the  economic  reformer  is 
limited  by  the  technical  productivity  of 
labor.  So  long  as  it  was  necessary  to 
the  bare  subsistence  of  the  human  race 
that  most  men  should  work  very  long 

56 


CAPITALISM 

hours  for  a  pittance,  so  long  no  civiliza- 
tion was  possible  except  an  aristocratic 
one;  if  there  were  to  be  men  with  suf- 
ficient leisure  for  any  mental  life,  there 
had  to  be  others  who  were  sacrificed  for 
the  good  of  the  few.  But  the  time  when 
such  a  system  was  necessary  has  passed 
away  with  the  progress  of  machinery. 
It  would  be  possible  now,  if  we  had  a 
wise  economic  system,  for  all  who  have 
mental  needs  to  find  satisfaction  for 
them.  By  a  few  hours  a  day  of  manual 
work,  a  man  can  produce  as  much  as  is 
necessary  for  his  own  subsistence;  and 
if  he  is  willing  to  forgo  luxuries,  that  is 
all  that  the  community  has  a  right  to 
demand  of  him.  It  ought  to  be  open  to 
all  who  so  desire  to  do  short  hours  of 
work  for  little  pay,  and  devote  their  lei- 
sure to  whatever  pursuit  happens  to  at- 
tract them.  No  doubt  the  great  major- 
ity of  those  who  chose  this  course  would 
57 


CAPITALISM 

spend  their  time  in  mere  amusement,  as 
most  of  the  rich  do  at  present.  But  it 
could  not  be  said,  in  such  a  society,  that 
they  were  parasites  upon  the  labor  of 
others.  And  there  would  be  a  minority 
who  would  give  their  hours  of  nominal 
idleness  to  science  or  art  or  literature, 
or  some  other  pursuit  out  of  which  fun- 
damental progress  may  come.  In  all 
such  matters,  organization  and  system 
can  only  do  harm.  The  one  thing  that 
can  be  done  is  to  provide  opportunity, 
without  repining  at  the  waste  that  re- 
sults from  most  men  failing  to  make 
good  use  of  the  opportunity. 

But  except  in  cases  of  unusual  lazi- 
ness or  eccentric  ambition,  most  men 
would  elect  to  do  a  full  day 's  work  for  a 
full  day's  pay.  For  these,  who  would 
form  the  immense  majority,  the  impor- 
tant thing  is  that  ordinary  work  should, 
as  far  as  possible,  afford  interest  and 
58 


CAPITALISM 

independence  and  scope  for  initiative. 
These  things  are  more  important  than 
income,  as  soon  as  a  certain  minimum 
has  been  reached.  They  can  be  secured 
by  gild  socialism,  by  industrial  self- 
government  subject  to  state  control  as 
regards  the  relations  of  a  trade  to  the 
rest  of  the  community.  So  far  as  I 
know,  they  cannot  be  secured  in  any 
other  way. 

Gild  socialism,  as  advocated  by  Mr. 
Orage  and  the  "New  Age,"  is  associated 
with  a  polemic  against  "political"  ac- 
tion, and  in  favor  of  direct  economic  ac- 
tion by  trade-unions.  It  shares  this  with 
syndicalism,  from  which  most  of  what  is 
new  in  it  is  derived.  But  I  see  no  reason 
for  this  attitude ;  political  and  economic 
action  seem  to  me  equally  necessary, 
each  in  its  own  time  and  place.  I  think 
there  is  danger  in  the  attempt  to  use 
the  machinery  of  the  present  capitalist 
59 


CAPITALISM 

state  for  socialistic  purposes.  But 
there  is  need  of  political  action  to 
transform  the  machinery  of  the  state, 
side  by  side  with  the  transformation 
which  we  hope  to  see  in  economic  insti- 
tutions. In  this  country,  neither  trans- 
formation is  likely  to  be  brought  about 
by  a  sudden  revolution;  we  must  expect 
each  to  come  step  by  step,  if  at  all,  and  I 
doubt  if  either  could  or  should  advance 
very  far  without  the  other. 

The  economic  system  we  should  ulti- 
mately wish  to  see  would  be  one  in  which 
the  state  would  be  the  sole  recipient  of 
economic  rent,  while  private  capitalistic 
enterprises  should  be  replaced  by  self- 
governing  combinations  of  those  who  ac- 
tually do  the  work.  It  ought  to  be  op- 
tional whether  a  man  does  a  whole  day 's 
work  for  a  whole  day's  pay,  or  half  a 
day's  work  for  half  a  day's  pay,  except 
in  cases  where  such  an  arrangement 
60 


CAPITALISM 

would  cause  practical  inconvenience.  A 
man's  pay  should  not  cease  through  the 
accident  of  his  work  being  no  longer 
needed,  but  should  continue  so  long  as  he 
is  willing  to  work,  a  new  trade  being 
taught  him  at  the  public  expense,  if  nec- 
essary. Unwillingness  to  work  should 
be  treated  medically  or  educationally, 
when  it  could  not  be  overcome  by  a 
change  to  some  more  congenial  occupa- 
tion. 

The  workers  in  a  given  industry  should 
all  be  combined  in  one  autonomous  unit, 
and  their  work  should  not  be  subject  to 
any  outside  control.  The  state  should 
fix  the  price  at  which  they  produce,  but 
should  leave  the  industry  self-governing 
in  all  other  respects.  In  fixing  prices, 
the  state  should,  as  far  as  possible,  allow 
each  industry  to  profit  by  any  improve- 
ments which  it  might  introduce  into  its 
own  processes,  but  should  endeavor  to 
61 


CAPITALISM 

prevent  undeserved  loss  or  gain  through 
changes  in  external  economic  conditions. 
In  this  way  there  would  be  every  incent- 
ive to  progress,  with  the  least  possible 
danger  of  unmerited  destitution.  And 
although  large  economic  organizations 
will  continue,  as  they  are  bound  to  do, 
there  will  be  a  diffusion  of  power  which 
will  take  away  the  sense  of  individual  im- 
potence from  which  men  and  women  suf- 
fer at  present. 

in 

Some  men,  though  they  may  admit 
that  such  a  system  would  be  desirable, 
will  argue  that  it  is  impossible  to  bring 
it  about,  and  that  therefore  we  must  con- 
centrate on  more  immediate  objects. 

I  think  it  must  be  conceded  that  a  po- 
litical party  ought  to  have  proximate 
aims,  measures  which  it  hopes  to  carry 
in  the  next  session  or  the  next  parlia- 
62 


CAPITALISM 

ment,  as  well  as  a  more  distant  goal. 
Marxian  socialism,  as  it  existed  in  Ger- 
many, seemed  to  me  to  suffer  in  this 
way :  although  the  party  was  numerically 
powerful,  it  was  politically  weak,  because 
it  had  no  minor  measures  to  demand 
while  waiting  for  the  revolution.  And 
when,  at  last,  German  socialism  was 
captured  by  those  who  desired  a  less 
impracticable  policy,  the  modification 
which  occurred  was  of  exactly  the  wrong 
kind:  acquiescence  in  bad  policies,  such 
as  militarism  and  imperialism,  rather 
than  advocacy  of  partial  reforms  which, 
however  inadequate,  would  still  have 
been  steps  in  the  right  direction. 

A  similar  defect  was  inherent  in  the 
policy  of  French  syndicalism  as  it  ex- 
isted before  the  war.  Everything  was 
to  wait  for  the  general  strike ;  after  ade- 
quate preparation,  one  day  the  whole 
proletariat  would  unanimously  refuse  to 
63 


CAPITALISM 

work,  the  property  owners  would  ac- 
knowledge their  defeat,  and  agree  to 
abandon  all  their  privileges  rather  than 
starve.  This  is  a  dramatic  conception; 
but  love  of  drama  is  a  great  enemy  of 
true  vision.  Men  cannot  be  trained,  ex- 
cept under  very  rare  circumstances,  to 
do  something  suddenly  which  is  very 
different  from  what  they  have  been  do- 
ing before.  If  the  general  strike  were 
to  succeed,  the*  victors,  despite  their 
anarchism,  would  be  compelled  at  once 
to  form  an  administration,  to  create  a 
new  police  force  to  prevent  looting  and 
wanton  destruction,  to  establish  a  pro- 
visional government  issuing  dictatorial 
orders  to  the  various  sections  of  revolu- 
tionaries. Now  the'  syndicalists  are  op- 
posed in  principle  to  all  political  action ; 
they  would  feel  that  they  were  departing 
from  their  theory  in  taking  the  neces- 
sary practical  steps,  and  they  would  be 
64 


CAPITALISM 

without  the  required  training  because  of 
their  previous  abstention  from  politics. 
For  these  reasons  it  is  likely  that,  even 
after  a  syndicalist  revolution,  actual 
power  would  fall  into  the  hands  of  men 
who  were  not  really  syndicalists. 

Another  objection  to  a  program 
which  is  to  be  realized  suddenly  at  some 
remote  date  by  a  revolution  or  a  general 
strike  is  that  enthusiasm  flags  when 
there  is  nothing  to  do  meanwhile,  and  no 
partial  success  to  lessen  the  weariness  of 
waiting.  The  only  sort  of  movement 
which  can  succeed  by  such  methods  is 
one  where  the  sentiment  and  the  pro- 
gram are  both  very  simple,  as  is  the 
case  in  rebellions  of  oppressed  nations. 
But  the  line  of  demarcation  between 
capitalist  and  wage-earner  is  not  sharp, 
like  the  line  between  Turk  and  Armenian, 
or  between  an  Englishman  and  a  native 
of  India.  Those  who  have  advocated 
65 


CAPITALISM 

the  social  revolution  have  been  mistaken 
in  their  political  methods,  chiefly  because 
they  have  not  realized  how  many  people 
there  are  in  the  community  whose  sym- 
pathies and  interests  lie  half  on  the  side 
of  capital,  half  on  the  i  side  of  labor. 
These  people  make  a  clear-cut  revolu- 
tionary policy  very  difficult. 

For  these  reasons,  those  who  aim  at  an 
economic  reconstruction  which  is  not 
likely  to  be  completed  to-morrow  must, 
if  they  are  to  have  any  hope  of  success, 
be  able  to  approach  their  goal  by  de- 
grees, through  measures  which  are  of 
some  use  in  themselves,  even  if  they 
should  not  ultimately  lead  to  the  desired 
end.  There  must  be  activities  which 
train  men  for  those  that  they  are  ulti- 
mately to  carry  out,  and  there  must  be 
possible  achievements  in  the  near  fu- 
ture, not  only  a  vngut  hope  of  a  distant 
paradise. 

66 


CAPITALISM 

But  although  I  believe  that  all  this  is 
true,  I  believe  no  less  firmly  that  really 
vital  and  radical  reform  requires  some 
vision  beyond  the  immediate  future, 
some  realization  of  what  human  beings 
might  make  of  human  life  if  they  chose. 
Without  some  such  hope,  men  will  not 
have  the  energy  and  enthusiasm  neces- 
sary to  overcome  opposition,  or  the 
steadfastness  to  persist  when  their  aims 
are  for  the  moment  unpopular.  Every 
man  who  has  really  sincere  desire 
for  any  great  amelioration  in  the  condi- 
tions of  life  has  first  to  face  ridicule, 
then  persecution,  then  cajolery  and  at- 
tempts at  subtle  corruption.  We  know 
from  painful  experience  how  few  pass 
unscathed  through  these  three  ordeals. 
The  last  especially,  when  the  reformer  is 
shown  all  the  kingdoms  of  the  earth,  is 
difficult,  indeed  almost  impossible,  ex- 
cept for  those  who  have  made  their  ulti- 
67 


CAPITALISM 

mate  goal  vivid  to  themselves  by  clear 
and  definite  thought. 

Economic  systems  are  concerned  es- 
sentially with  the  production  and  dis- 
tribution of  material  goods.  Our  pres- 
ent system  is  wasteful  on  the  production 
side,  and  unjust  on  the  side  of  distribu- 
tion. It  involves  a  life  of  slavery  to 
economic  forces  for  the  great  majority 
of  the  community,  and  for  the  minority  a 
degree  of  power  over  the  lives  of  others 
which  no  man  ought  to  have.  In  a  good 
community  the  production  of  the  neces- 
saries of  existence, would  be  a  mere  pre- 
liminary to  the  important  and  interest- 
ing part  of  life,  except  for  those  who  find 
a  pleasure  in  some  part  of  the  work  of 
producing  necessaries.  It  is  not  in  the 
least  necessary  that  economic  needs 
should  dominate  man  as  they  do  at  pres- 
ent. This  is  rendered  necessary  at  pres- 
ent, partly  by  the  inequalities  of  wealth, 
68 


CAPITALISM 

partly  by  the  fact  that  things  of  real 
value,  such  as  a  good  education,  are  dif- 
ficult to  acquire,  except  for  the  well-to-do. 

Private  ownership  of  land  and  capital 
is  not  defensible  on  grounds  of  justice, 
or  on  the  ground  that  it  is  an  economical 
way  of  producing  what  the  community 
needs.  But  the  chief  objections  to  it  are 
that  it  stunts  the  lives  of  men  and 
women,  that  it  enshrines  a  ruthless  pos- 
sessiveness  in  all  the  respect  which  is 
given  to  success,  that  it  leads  men  to  fill 
the  greater  part  of  their  time  and 
thought  with  the  acquisition  of  purely 
material  goods,  and  that  it  affords  a  ter- 
rible obstacle  to  the  advancement  of  civ- 
ilization and  creative  energy. 

The  approach  to  a  system  free  from 
these  evils  need  not  be  sudden ;  it  is  per- 
fectly possible  to  proceed  step  by  step 
towards  economic  freedom  and  indus- 
trial self-government.  It  is  not  true 
69 


CAPITALISM 

that  there  is  any  outward  difficulty  in 
creating  the  kind  of  institutions  that  we 
have  been  considering.  If  organized 
labor  wishes  to  create  them,  nothing 
could  stand  in  its  way.  The  difficulty  in- 
volved is  merely  the  difficulty  of  inspir- 
ing men  with  hope,  of  giving  them 
enough  imagination  to  see  that  the  evils 
from  which  they  suffer  are  unnecessary, 
and  enough  thought  to  understand  how 
the  evils  are  to  be  cured.  This  is  a  dif- 
ficulty which  can  be  overcome  by  time 
and  energy.  But  it  will  not  be  over- 
come if  the  leaders  of  organized  labor 
have  no  breadth  of  outlook,  no  vision,  no 
hopes  beyond  some  slight  superficial  im- 
provement within  the  framework  of  the 
existing  system.  Revolutionary  action 
may  be  unnecessary,  but  revolutionary 
thought  is  indispensable,  and,  as  the  out- 
come of  thought,  a  rational  and  con- 
structive hope. 

70 


Ill 

PITFALLS  IN  SOCIALISM 


Ill 

PITFALLS     IN     SOCIALISM 


IN  its  early  days,  socialism  was  a 
revolutionary  movement  of  which 
the  object  was  the  liberation  of  the  wage- 
earning  classes  and  the  establishment  of 
freedom  and  justice.  The  passage  from 
capitalism  to  the  new  regime  was  to  be 
sudden  and  violent:  capitalists  were  to 
be  expropriated  without  compensation, 
and  their  power  was  not  to  be  replaced 
by  any  new  authority. 

Gradually  a   change  came   over  the 
spirit  of  socialism.    In  France,  social- 
ists became  members  of  the  government, 
and  made  and  unmade  parliamentary 
73 


PITFALLS  IN  SOCIALISM 

majorities.  In  Germany,  social  democ- 
racy grew  so  strong  that  it  became  im- 
possible for  it  to  resist  the  temptation  to 
barter  away  some  of  its  intransigeance  in 
return  for  government  recognition  of  its 
claims.  In  England,  the  Fabians  taught 
the  advantage  of  reform  as  against 
revolution,  and  of  conciliatory  bargain- 
ing as  against'  irreconcilable  antagon- 
ism. 

The  method  of  gradual  reform  has 
many  merits  as  compared  to  the  method 
of  revolution,  and  I  have  no  wish  to 
preach  revolution.  But  gradual  reform 
has  certain  dangers,  to  wit,  the  owner- 
ship or  control  of  businesses  hitherto  in 
private  hands,  and  by  encouraging  legis- 
lative interference  for  the  benefit  of  vari- 
ous sections  of  the  wage-earning  classes. 
I  think  it  is  at  least  doubtful  whether 
such  measures  do  anything  at  all  to  con- 
tribute toward  the  ideals  which  inspired 
74 


PITFALLS  IN  SOCIALISM 

the  early  socialists  and  still  inspire  the 
great  majority  of  those  who  advocate 
some  form  of  socialism. 

Let  us  take  as  an  illustration  such  a 
measure  as  state  purchase  of  railways. 
This  is  a  typical  object  of  state  social- 
ism, thoroughly  practicable,  already 
achieved  in  many  countries,  and  clearly 
the  sort  of  step  that  must  be  taken  in 
any  piecemeal  approach  to  complete  col- 
lectivism. Yet  I  see  no  reason  to  believe 
that  any  real  advance  toward  democ- 
racy, freedom,  or  economic  justice  is 
achieved  when  a  state  takes  over  the 
railways  after  full  compensation  to  the 
shareholders. 

Economic  justice  demands  a  diminu- 
tion, if  not  a  total  abolition,  of  the  pro- 
portion of  the  national  income  which 
goes  to  the  recipients  of  rent  and  inter- 
est. But  when  the  holders  of  railway 
shares  are  given  government  stock  to 
75 


PITFALLS  IN  SOCIALISM 

replace  their  shares,  they  are  given  the 
prospect  of  an  income  in  perpetuity 
equal  to  what  they  might  reasonably  ex- 
pect to  have  derived  from  their  shares. 
.Unless  there  is  reason  to  expect  a  great 
increase  in  the  earnings  of  railways,  the 
whole  operation  does  nothing  to  alter  the 
distribution  of  wealth.  This  could  olily 
be  effected  if  the  present  owners  were 
expropriated,  or  paid  less  than  the  mar- 
ket value,  or  given  a  mere  life-interest 
as  compensation.  When  full  value  is 
given,  economic  justice  is  not  advanced 
in  any  degree. 

There  is  equally  little  advance  toward 
freedom.  The  men  employed  on  the 
railway  have  no  more  voice  than  they 
had  before  in  the  management  of  the 
railway,  or  in  the  wages  and  conditions 
of  work.  Instead  of  having  to  fight  the 
directors,  with  the  possibility  of  an  ap- 
peal to  the  government,  they  now  have 
76 


PITFALLS  IN  SOCIALISM 

to  fight  the  government  directly;  and 
experience  does  not  lead  to  the  view  that 
a  government  department  has  any  spe- 
cial tenderness  toward  the  claims  of 
labor.  If  they  strike,  they  have  to  con- 
tend against  the  whole  organized  power 
of  the  state,  which  they  can  only  do  suc- 
cessfully if  they  happen  to  have  a  strong 
public  opinion  on  their  side.  In  view  of 
the  influence  which  the  state  can  always 
exercise  on  the  press,  public  opinion  is 
likely  to  be  biased  against  them,  partic- 
ularly when  a  nominally  progressive 
government  is  in  power.  There  will  no 
longer  be  the  possibility  of  divergences 
between  the  policies  of  different  rail- 
ways. Railway  men  in  England  de- 
rived advantages  for  many  years  from 
the  comparatively  liberal  policy  of  the 
North  Eastern  Railway,  which  they  were 
able  to  use  as  an  argument  for  a  similar 
policy  elsewhere.  Such  possibilities  are 
77 


PITFALLS  IN  SOCIALISM 

excluded  by  the  dead  uniformity  of  state 
administration. 

And  there  is  no  real  advance  toward 
democracy.  The  administration  of  the 
railways  will  be  in  the  hands  of  officials 
whose  bias  and  associations  separate 
them  from  labor,  and  who  will  develop 
an  autocratic  temper  through  the  habit 
of  power.  The  democratic  machinery 
by  which  these  officials  are  nominally 
controlled  is  cumbrous  and  remote,  and 
can  only  be  brought  into  operation  on 
first-class  issues  which  rouse  the  interest 
of  the  whole  nation.  Even  then  it  is 
very  likely  that  the  superior  education 
of  the  officials  and  the  government,  com- 
bined with  the  advantages  of  their  posi- 
tion, will  enable  them  to  mislead  the  pub- 
lic as  to  the  issues,  and  alienate  the  gen- 
eral sympathy  even  from  the  most  excel- 
lent cause. 

I  do  not  deny  that  these  evils  exist  at 
78 


PITFALLS  IN  SOCIALISM 

present ;  I  say  only  that  they  will  not  be 
remedied  by  such  measures  as  the  na- 
tionalization of  railways  in  the  present 
economic  and  political  environment.  A 
greater  upheaval,  and  a  greater  change 
in  men's  habits  of  mind,  is  necessary  for 
any  really  vital  progress. 

ii 

State  socialism,  even  in  a  nation  which 
possesses  the  form  of  political  democ- 
racy, is  not  a  truly  democratic  system. 
The  way  in  which  it  fails  to  be  demo- 
cratic may  be  made  plain  by  an  analogy 
from  the  political  sphere.  Every  demo- 
crat recognizes  that  the  Irish  ought  to 
have  self-government  for  Irish  affairs, 
and  ought  not  to  be  told  that  they  have 
no  grievance  because  they  share  in  the 
Parliament  of  the  United  Kingdom.  It 
is  essential  to  democracy  that  any  group 
of  citizens  whose  interests  or  desires 
79 


PITFALLS  IN  SOCIALISM 

separate  them  at  all  widely  from  the  rest 
of  the  community  should  be  free  to  de- 
cide their  internal  aff airs  for  themselves. 
And  what  is  true  of  national  or  local 
groups  is  equally  true  of  economic 
groups,  such  as  miners  or  railway  men. 
The  national  machinery  of  general  elec- 
tions is  by  no  means  sufficient  to  secure 
for  groups  of  this  kind  the  freedom 
which  they  ought  to  have. 

The  power  of  officials,  which  is  a  great 
and  growing  danger  in  the  modern 
state,  arises  from  the  fact  that  the  ma- 
jority of  the  voters,  who  constitute  the 
only  ultimate  popular  control  over  offi- 
cials, are  as  a  rule  not  interested  in  any 
one  particular  question,  and  are  there- 
fore not  likely  to  interfere  effectively 
against  an  official  who  is  thwarting  the 
wishes  of  the  minority  who  are  inter- 
ested. The  official  is  nominally  subject 
to  indirect  popular  control,  but  not  to 
80 


PITFALLS  IN  SOCIALISM 

the  control  of  those  who  are  directly  af- 
fected by  his  action.  The  bulk  of  the 
public  will  either  never  hear  about  the 
matter  in  dispute,  or,  if  they  do  hear, 
will  form  a  hasty  opinion  based  upon 
inadequate  information,  which  is  far 
more  likely  to  come  from  the  side  of  the 
officials  than  from  the  section  of  the  com- 
munity which  is  affected  by  the  question 
at  issue.  In  an  important  political  is- 
sue, some  degree  of  knowledge  is  likely 
to  be  diffused  in  time ;  but  in  other  mat- 
ters there  is  little  hope  that  this  will  hap- 
pen. 

It  may  be  said  that  the  power  of  offi- 
cials is  much  less  dangerous  than  the 
power  of  capitalists,  because  officials 
have  no  economic  interests  that  are  op- 
posed to  those  of  wage-earners.  But 
this  argument  involves  far  too  simple  a 
theory  of  political  human  nature — a 
theory  which  orthodox  socialism  adopted 
81 


PITFALLS  IN  SOCIALISM 

from  the  classical  political  economy,  and 
has  tended  to  retain  in  spite  of  growing 
evidence  of  its  falsity.  Economic  self- 
interest,  and  even  economic  class-inter- 
est, is  by  no  means  the  only  important 
political  motive.  Officials,  whose  salary 
is  generally  quite  unaffected  by  their 
decisions  on  particular  questions,  are 
likely,  if  they  are  of  average  honesty, 
to  decide  according  to  their  view  of  the 
public  interest ;  but  their  view  will  none 
the  less  have  a  bias  which  will  often 
lead  them  wrong.  It  is  important  to  un- 
derstand this  bias  before  entrusting  our 
destinies  too  unreservedly  to  govern- 
ment departments. 

The  first  thing  to  observe  is  that,  in 
any  very  large  organization,  and  above 
all  in  a  great  state,  officials  and  legisla- 
tors are  usually  very  remote  from  those 
whom  they  govern,  and  not  imagina- 
tively acquainted  with  the  conditions  of 
82 


PITFALLS  IN  SOCIALISM 

life  to  which  their  decisions  will  be  ap- 
plied. This  makes  them  ignorant  of 
much  that  they  ought  to  know,  even 
when  they  are  industrious  and  willing  to 
learn  whatever  can  be  taught  by  statis- 
tics and  blue-books.  The  one  thing  they 
understand  intimately  is  the  office  rou- 
tine and  the  administrative  rules.  The 
result  is  an  undue  anxiety  to  secure  a 
uniform  system.  I  have  heard  of  a 
French  minister  of  education  taking  out 
his  watch,  and  remarking,  "At  this  mo- 
ment all  the  children  of  such  and  such 
an  age  in  France  are  learning  so  and 
so."  This  is  the  ideal  of  the  adminis- 
trator, an  ideal  utterly  fatal  to  free 
growth,  initiative,  experiment,  or  any 
far  reaching  innovation.  Laziness  is 
not  one  of  the  motives  recognized  in  text- 
books on  political  theory,  because  all 
ordinary  knowledge  of  human  nature  is 
considered  unworthy  of  the  dignity  of 
83 


PITFALLS  IN  SOCIALISM 

these  works;  yet  we  all  know  that  lazi- 
ness is  an  immensely  powerful  motive 
with  all  but  a  small  minority  of  man- 
kind. 

Unfortunately,  in  this  case  laziness  is 
reinforced  by  love  of  power,  which  leads 
energetic  officials  to  create  the  systems 
which  lazy  officials  like  to  administer. 
The  energetic  official  inevitably  dislikes 
anything  that  he  does  not  control.  His 
official  sanction  must  be  obtained  before 
anything  can  be  done.  Whatever  he 
finds  in  existence  he  wishes  to  alter  in 
some  way,  so  as  to  have  the  satisfaction 
of  feeling  his  power  and  making  it  felt. 
If  he  is  conscientious,  he  will  think  out 
some  perfectly  uniform  and  rigid  scheme 
which  he  believes  to  be  the  best  possible, 
and  he  will  then  impose  this  scheme  ruth- 
lessly, whatever  promising  growths  he 
may  have  to  lop  down  for  the  sake  of 
symmetry.  The  result  inevitably  has 
84 


PITFALLS  IN  SOCIALISM 

something  of  the  deadly  dullness  of  a 
new  rectangular  town,  as  compared  with 
the  beauty  and  richness  of  an  ancient 
city  which  has  lived  and  grown  with  the 
separate  lives  and  individualities  of 
many  generations.  What  has  grown  is 
always  more  living  than  what  has  been 
decreed;  but  the  energetic  official  will 
always  prefer  the  tidiness  of  what  he 
has  decreed  to  the  apparent  disorder  of 
spontaneous  growth. 

The  mere  possession  of  power  tends  to 
produce  a  love  of  power,  which  is  a  very 
dangerous  motive,  because  the  only  sure 
proof  of  power  consists  in  preventing 
others  from  doing  what  they  wish  to  do. 
The  essential  theory  of  democracy  is  the 
diffusion  of  power  among  the  whole  peo- 
ple, so  that  the  evils  produced  by  one 
man's  possession  of  great  power  shall 
be  obviated.  But  the  diffusion  of  power 
through  democracy  is  only  effective 
85 


PITFALLS  IN  SOCIALISM 

when  the  voters  take  an  interest  in  the 
question  involved.  When  the  question 
does  not  interest  them,  they  do  not  at- 
tempt to  control  the  administration,  and 
all  actual  power  passes  into  the  hands 
of  officials. 

For  this  reason,  the  true  ends  of 
democracy  are  not  achieved  by  state 
socialism  or  by  any  system  which  places 
great  power  in  the  hands  of  men  subject 
to  no  popular  control  except  that  which 
is  more  or  less  indirectly  exercised 
through  parliament. 

Any  fresh  survey  of  men's  political 
actions  shows  that,  in  those  who  have 
enough  energy  to  be  politically  effective, 
love  of  power  is  a  stronger  motive  than 
economic  self-interest.  Love  of  power 
actuates  the  great  millionaires,  who  have 
far  more  money  than  they  can  spend,  but 
continue  to  amass  wealth  merely  in  or- 
der to  control  more  and  more  of  the 
86 


PITFALLS  IN  SOCIALISM 

world 's  finance.1  Love  of  power  is  obvi- 
ously the  ruling  motive  of  many  politi- 
cians. It  is  also  the  chief  cause  of  wars, 
which  are  admittedly  almost  always  a 
bad  speculation  from  the  mere  point  of 
view  of  wealth.  For  this  reason,  a  new 
economic  system  which  merely  attacks 
economic  motives  and  does  not  interfere 
with  the  concentration  of  power  is  not 
likely  to  effect  any  very  great  improve- 
ment in  the  world.  This  is  one  of  the 
chief  reasons  for  regarding  state  so- 
cialism with  suspicion. 

in 

The  problem  of  the  distribution  of 
power  is  a  more  difficult  one  than  the 
problem  of  the  distribution  of  wealth. 
The  machinery  of  representative  gov- 
ernment has  concentrated  on  ultimate 
power  as  the  only  important  matter,  and 

iCf.  J.  A.  Hobson,  "The  Evolution  of  Modern 
Capitalism." 

87 


PITFALLS  IN  SOCIALISM 

has  ignored  immediate  executive  power. 
Almost  nothing  has  been  done  to  democ- 
ratize administration.  Government  of- 
ficials, in  virtue  of  their  income,  secur- 
ity, and  social  position,  are  likely  to  be 
on  the  side  of  the  rich,  who  have  been 
their  daily  associates  ever  since  the  time 
of  school  and  college.  And  whether  or 
not  they  are  on  the  side  of  the  rich,  they 
are  not  likely,  for  the  reasons  we  have 
been  considering,  to  be  genuinely  in 
favor  of  progress.  What  applies  to 
government  officials  applies  also  to 
members  of  Parliament,  with  the  sole 
difference  that  they  have  had  to  recom- 
mend themselves  to  a  constituency. 
This,  however,  only  adds  hypocrisy  to 
the  other  qualities  of  a  ruling  caste. 
Whoever  has  stood  in  the  lobby  of  the 
House  of  Commons  watching  members 
emerge  with  wandering  eye  and  hypo- 
thetical smile,  until  the  constituent  is 


PITFALLS  IN  SOCIALISM 

espied,  his  arm  taken,  "my  dear  f el- 
low  "  whispered  in  his  ear,  and  his  steps 
guided  toward  the  inner  precincts — 
whoever,  observing  this,  has  realized 
that  these  are  the  arts  by  which  men  be- 
come and  remain  legislators,  can  hardly 
fail  to  feel  that  democracy  as  it  exists 
is  not  an  absolutely  perfect  instrument 
of  government.  It  is  a  painful  fact  that 
the  ordinary  voter,  at  any  rate  in  Eng- 
land, is  quite  blind  to  insincerity. 
The  man  who  does  not  care  about  any 
definite  political  measures  can  generally 
be  won  by  corruption  or  flattery,  open 
or  concealed;  the  man  who  is  set  on  se- 
curing reforms  will  generally  prefer  an 
ambitious  windbag  to  a  man  who  desires 
the  public  good  without  possessing  a 
ready  tongue.  And  the  ambitious  wind- 
bag, as  soon  as  he  has  become  a  power  by 
the  enthusiasm  he  has  aroused,  will  sell 
his  influence  to  the  governing  clique, 
89 


PITFALLS  IN  SOCIALISM 

sometimes  openly,  sometimes  by  the 
more  subtle  method  of  intentionally  fail- 
ing at  a  crisis.  This  is  part  of  the 
normal  working  of  democracy  as  em- 
bodied in  representative  institutions. 
Yet  a  cure  must  be  found  if  democracy  is 
not  to  remain  a  farce. 

One  of  the  sources  of  evil  in  modern 
large  democracies  is  the  fact  that  most 
of  the  electorate  have  no  direct  or  vital 
interest  in  most  of  the  questions  that 
arise.  Should  Welsh  children  be  al- 
lowed the  use  of  the  Welsh  language  in 
schools?  Should  gipsies  be  compelled 
to  abandon  their  nomadic  life  at  tKe 
bidding,  of  the  education  authorities? 
Should  miners  have  an  eight-hour  day? 
Should  Christian  Scientists  be  compelled 
to  call  in  doctors  in  case  of  serious  ill- 
ness? These  are  matters  of  passionate 
interest  to  certain  sections  of  the  com- 
munity, but  of  very  little  interest  to  the 
90 


PITFALLS  IN  SOCIALISM 

great  majority.  If  they  are  decided  ac- 
cording to  the  wishes  of  the  numerical 
majority,  the  intense  desires  of  a  mino- 
rity will  be  overborne  by  the  very  slight 
and  uninformed  whims  of  the  indifferent 
remainder.  If  the  minority  are  geo- 
graphically concentrated,  so  that  they 
can  decide  elections  in  a  certain  number 
of  constituencies,  like  the  Welsh  and  the 
miners,  they  have  a  good  chance  of  get- 
ting their  way,  by  the  wholly  beneficent 
process  which  its  enemies  describe  as 
log-rolling.  But  if  they  are  scattered 
and  politically  feeble,  like  the  gipsies  and 
the  Christian  Scientists,  they  stand  a 
very  poor  chance  against  the  prejudices 
of  the  majority.  Even  when  they  are 
geographically  concentrated,  like  the 
Irish,  they  may  fail  to  obtain  their 
wishes,  because  they  arouse  some  hostil- 
ity or  some  instinct  of  domination  in  the 
majority.  Such  a  state  of  affairs  is  the 
91 


PITFALLS  IN  SOCIALISM 

negation  of  all  democratic  principles. 
The  tyranny  of  the  majority  is  a  very 
real  danger.  It  is  a  mistake  to  suppose 
that  the  majority  is  necessarily  right. 
On  every  new  question  the  majority  is 
always  wrong  at  first.  In  matters  where 
the  state  must  act  as  a  whole,  such  as 
tariffs,  for  example,  decision  by  majori- 
ties is  probably  the  best  method  that  can 
be  devised.  But  there  are  a  great  many 
questions  in  which  there  is  no  need  of  a 
uniform  decision.  Eeligion  is  recog- 
nized as  one  of  these.  Education  ought 
to  be  one,  provided  a  certain  minimum 
standard  is  attained.  Military  service 
clearly  ought  to  be  one.  Wherever  di- 
vergent action  by  different  groups  is 
possible  without  anarchy,  it  ought  to  be 
permitted.  In  such  cases  it  will  be 
found  by  those  who  consider  past  his- 
tory that,  whenever  any  new  funda- 
mental issue  arises,  the  majority  are  in 
92 


PITFALLS  IN  SOCIALISM 

the  wrong,  because  they  are  guided  by 
prejudice  and  habit.  Progress  comes 
through  the  gradual  effect  of  a  minority 
in  converting  opinion  and  altering  cus- 
tom. At  one  time — not  so  very  long 
ago — it  was  considered  monstrous  wick- 
edness to  maintain  that  old  women  ought 
not  to  be  burnt  as  witches.  If  those  who 
held  this  opinion  had  been  forcibly  sup- 
pressed, we  should  still  be  steeped  in 
medieval  superstition.  For  such  rea- 
sons, it  is  of  the  utmost  importance  that 
the  majority  should  refrain  from  impos- 
ing its  will  as  regards  matters  in  which 
uniformity  is  not  absolutely  necessary. 

IV 

The  cure  for  the  evils  and  dangers 
which  we  have  been  considering  is  a  very 
great  extension  of  devolution  and  fed- 
eral government.  Wherever  there  is  a 
national  consciousness,  as  in  Wales  and 
93 


PITFALLS  IN  SOCIALISM 

Ireland,  the  area  in  which  it  exists  ought 
to  be  allowed  to  decide  all  purely  local 
affairs  without  external  interference. 
But  there  are  many  matters  which  ought 
to  be  left  to  the  management,  not  of  lo- 
cal groups,  but  of  trade  groups,  or  of  or- 
ganizations embodying  some  set  of  opin- 
ions. In  the  East,  men  are  subject  to 
different  laws  according  to  the  religion 
they  profess.  Something  of  this  kind 
is  necessary  if  any  semblance  of  liberty 
is  to  exist  where  there  is  great  diverg- 
ence in  beliefs. 

Some  matters  are  essentially  geo- 
graphical; for  instance,  gas  and  water, 
roads,  tariffs,  armies  and  navies. 
These  must  be  decided  by  an  authority 
representing  an  area.  How  large  the 
area  ought  to  be,  depends  upon  acci- 
dents of  topography  and  sentiment,  and 
also  upon  the  nature  of  the  matter  in- 
volved. Gas  and  water  require  a  small 
94 


PITFALLS  IN  SOCIALISM 

area,  roads  a  somewhat  larger  one,  while 
the  only  satisfactory  area  for  an  army 
or  a  navy  is  the  whole  planet,  since  no 
smaller  area  will  prevent  war. 

But  the  proper  unit  in  most  economic 
questions,  and  also  in  most  questions 
that  are  intimately  concerned  with  per- 
sonal opinions,  is  not  geographical  at 
all.  The  internal  management  of  rail- 
ways ought  not  to  be  in  the  hands  of  the 
geographical  state,  for  reasons  which  we 
have  already  considered.  Still  less 
ought  it  to  be  in  the  hands  of  a  set  of  ir- 
responsible capitalists.  The  only  truly 
democratic  system  would  be  one  which 
left  the  internal  management  of  railways 
in  the  hands  of  the  men  who  work  on 
them.  These  men  should  elect  the  gen- 
eral manager,  and  a  parliament  of  di- 
rectors if  necessary.  All  questions  of 
wages,  conditions  of  labor,  running  of 
trains,  and  acquisition  of  material, 
95 


PITFALLS  IN  SOCIALISM 

should  be  in  the  hands  of  a  body  respon- 
sible only  to  those  actually  engaged  in 
the  work  of  the  railway. 

The  same  arguments  apply  to  other 
large  trades :  mining,  iron  and  steel,  cot- 
ton, and  so  on.  British  trade-union- 
ism, it  seems  to  me,  has  erred  in  con- 
ceiving labor  and  capital  as  both 
permanent  forces,  which  were  to  be 
brought  to  some  equality  of  strength  by 
the  organization  of  labor.  This  seems 
to  me  too  modest  an  ideal.  The  ideal 
which  I  should  wish  to  substitute  in- 
volves the  conquest  of  democracy  and 
self-government  in  the  economic  sphere 
as  in  the  political  sphere,  and  the  total 
abolition  of  the  power  now  wielded  by 
the  capitalist.  The  man  who  works  on 
a  railway  ought  to  have  a  voice  in  the 
government  of  the  railway,  just  as  much 
as  the  man  who  works  in  a  state  has  a 
right  to  a  voice  in  the  management  of  his 
96 


PITFALLS  IN  SOCIALISM 

state.  The  concentration  of  business  in- 
itiative in  the  hands  of  the  employers  is 
a  great  evil,  and  robs  the  employees  of 
their  legitimate  share  of  interest  in  the 
larger  problems  of  their  trade. 

French  syndicalists  were  the  first  to 
advocate  the  system  of  trade  autonomy 
as  a  better  solution  than  state  social- 
ism. But  in  their  view  the  trades  were 
to  be  independent,  almost  like  sovereign 
states  at  present.  Such  a  system  would 
not  promote  peace,  any  more  than  it 
does  at  present  in  international  rela- 
tions. In  the  affairs  of  any  body  of 
men,  we  may  broadly  distinguish  what 
may  be  called  questions  of  home  politics 
from  questions  of  foreign  politics. 
Every  group  sufficiently  well-marked  to 
constitute  a  political  entity  ought  to  be 
autonomous  in  regard  to  internal  mat- 
ters, but  not  in  regard  to  those  that  di- 
rectly affect  the  outside  world.  If  two 
97 


PITFALLS  IN  SOCIALISM 

groups  are  both  entirely  free  as  regards 
their  relations  to  each  other,  there  is  no 
way  of  averting  the  danger  of  an  open 
or  covert  appeal  to  force.  The  relations 
of  a  group  of  men  to  the  outside  world 
ought,  whenever  possible,  to  be  con- 
trolled by  a  neutral  authority.  It  is 
here  that  the  state  is  necessary  for  ad- 
justing the  relations  between  different 
trades.  The  men  who  make  some  com- 
modity should  be  entirely  free  as  regards 
hours  of  labor,  distribution  of  the  total 
earnings  of  the  trade,  and  all  questions 
of  business  management.  But  they 
should  not  be  free  as  regards  the  price 
of  what  they  produce,  since  price  is  a 
matter  concerning  their  relations  to  the 
rest  of  the  community.  If  there  were 
nominal  freedom  in  regard  to  price, 
there  would  be  a  danger  of  a  constant 
tug-of-war,  in  which  those  trades  which 
were  most  immediately  necessary  to  the 
98 


PITFALLS  IN  SOCIALISM 

existence  of  the  community  could  always 
obtain  an  unfair  advantage.  Force  is 
no  more  admirable  in  the  economic 
sphere  than  in  dealings  between  states. 
In  order  to  secure  the  maximum  of  free- 
dom with  the  minimum  of  force,  the  uni- 
versal principle  is:  Autonomy  within 
each  politically  important  group,  and  a 
neutral  authority  for  deciding  questions 
involving  relations  between  groups. 
The  neutral  authority  should,  of  course, 
rest  on  a  democratic  basis,  but  should, 
if  possible,  represent  a  constituency 
wider  than  that  of  the  groups  concerned. 
In  international  affairs  the  only  ade- 
quate authority  would  be  one  represent- 
ing all  civilized  nations. 

In  order  to  prevent  undue  extension 
of  the  power  of  such  authorities,  it  is 
desirable  and  necessary  that  the  various 
autonomous  groups  should  be  very  jeal- 
ous of  their  liberties,  and  very  ready  to 
99 


PITFALLS  IN  SOCIALISM 

resist  by  political  means  any  encroach- 
ments upon  their  independence.  State 
socialism  does  not  tolerate  such  groups, 
each  with  their  own  officials  responsible 
to  the  group.  Consequently  it  abandons 
the  internal  affairs  of  a  group  to  the  con- 
trol of  men  not  responsible  to  that  group 
or  specially  aware  of  its  needs.  This 
opens  the  door  to  tyranny  and  to  the 
destruction  of  initiative.  These  dangers 
are  avoided  by  a  system  which  allows 
any  group  of  men  to  combine  for  any 
given  purpose,  provided  it  is  not  preda- 
tory, and  to  claim  from  the  central  au- 
thority such  self-government  as  is  neces- 
sary to  the  carrying  out  of  the  purpose. 
Churches  of  various  denominations  af- 
ford an  instance.  Their  autonomy  was 
won  by  centuries  of  warfare  and  perse- 
cution. It  is  to  be  hoped  that  a  less 
terrible  struggle  will  be  required  to 
achieve  the  same  result  in  the  economic 
100 


PITFALLS  IN  SOCIALISM 

sphere.  But  whatever  the  obstacles,  I 
believe  the  importance  of  liberty  is  as 
great  in  the  one  case  as  it  has  been  ad- 
mitted to  be  in  the  other. 


101 

LIBRARY 


IV 


IV 


SOCIETY  cannot  exist  without  law 
and  order,  and  cannot  advance  ex- 
cept through  the  initiative  of  vigorous 
innovators.  Yet  law  and  order  are  al- 
ways hostile  to  innovations,  and  innova- 
tors are  almost  always,  to  some  extent, 
anarchists.  Those  whose  minds  are 
dominated  by  fear  of  a  relapse  towards 
barbarism  will  emphasize  the  importance 
of  law  and  order,  while  those  who  are 
inspired  by  the  hope  of  an  advance  to- 
wards civilization  will  usually  be  more 
conscious  of  the  need  of  individual  in- 
105 


INDIVIDUAL  LIBERTY 

itiative.  Both  temperaments  are  neces- 
sary, and  wisdom  lies  in  allowing  each 
to  operate  freely  where  it  is  beneficent. 
But  those  who  are  on  the  side  of  law  and 
order,  since  they  are  reinforced  by  cus- 
tom and  the  instinct  for  upholding  the 
status  quo,  have  no  need  of  a  reasoned 
defense.  It  is  the  innovators  who  have 
difficulty  in  being  allowed  to  exist  and 
work.  Each  generation  believes  that 
this  difficulty  is  a  thing  of  the  past,  but 
each  generation  is  only  tolerant  of  past 
innovations.  Those  of  its  own  day  are 
met  with  the  same  persecution  as  though 
the  principle  of  toleration  had  never  been 
heard  of. 

"In  early  society,"  says  Wester- 
marck,  "customs  are  not  only  moral 
rules,  but  the  only  moral  rules  ever 
thought  of.  The  savage  strictly  com- 
plies with  the  Hegelian  command  that  no 
man  must  have  a  private  conscience. 
106 


INDIVIDUAL  LIBERTY 

The  following  statement,  which  refers 
to  the  Tinnevelly  Shanars,  may  be 
quoted  as  a  typical  example:  'Solitary 
individuals  amongst  them  rarely  adopt 
any  new  opinions,  or  any  new  course  of 
procedure.  They  follow  the  multitude 
to  do  evil,  and  they  follow  the  multitude 
to  do  good.  They  think  in  herds. '  " * 

Those  among  ourselves  who  have 
never  thought  a  thought  or  done  a  deed 
in  the  slightest  degree  different  from  the 
thoughts  and  deeds  of  our  neighbors  will 
congratulate  themselves  on  the  differ- 
ence between  us  and  the  savage.  But 
those  who  have  ever  attempted  any  real 
innovation  cannot  help  feeling  that  the 
people  they  know  are  not  so  very  unlike 
the  Tinnevelly  Shanars. 

Under  the  influence  of  socialism,  even 
progressive  opinion,  in  recent  years,  has 

i  "The  Origin  and  Development  of  the  Moral  Ideas," 
2d  edition,  Vol.  I,  p.  119. 

107 


INDIVIDUAL  LIBERTY 

been  hostile  to  individual  liberty.  Lib- 
erty is  associated,  in  the  minds  of  re- 
formers, with  laissez-faire,  the  Man- 
chester School,  and  the  exploitation  of 
women  and  children  which  resulted  from 
what  was  euphemistically  called  "free 
competition. "  All  these  things  were 
evil,  and  required  state  interference;  in 
fact,  there  is  need  of  an  immense  in- 
crease of  state  action  in  regard  to  cog- 
nate evils  which  still  exist.  In  every- 
thing that  concerns  the  economic  life  of 
the  community,  as  regards  both  distri- 
bution and  conditions  of  production, 
what  is  required  is  more  public  control, 
not  less — how  much  more,  I  do  not  pro- 
fess to  know. 

Another  direction  in  which  there  is 
urgent  need  of  the  substitution  of  law 
and  order  for  anarchy  is  international 
relations.  At  present,  each  sovereign 
state  has  complete  individual  freedom, 
108 


INDIVIDUAL  LIBEETY 

subject  only  to  the  sanction  of  war. 
This  individual  freedom  will  have  to  be 
curtailed  in  regard  to  external  relations 
if  wars  are  ever  to  cease. 

But  when  we  pass  outside  the  sphere 
of  material  possessions,  we  find  that  the 
arguments  in  favor  of  public  control  al- 
most entirely  disappear. 

Eeligion,  to  begin  with,  is  recognized 
as  a  matter  in  which  the  state  ought  not 
to  interfere.  Whether  a  man  is  Chris- 
tian, Mahometan,  or  Jew  is  a  question 
of  no  public  concern,  so  long  as  he  obeys 
the  laws ;  and  the  laws  ought  to  be  such 
as  men  of  all  religions  can  obey.  Yet 
even  here  there  are  limits.  No  civilized 
state  would  tolerate  a  religion  demand- 
ing human  sacrifice.  The  English  in  In- 
dia put  an  end  to  suttee,  in  spite  of  a 
fixed  principle  of  non-interference  with 
native  religious  customs.  Perhaps  they 
were  wrong  to  prevent  suttee,  yet  almost 
109 


INDIVIDUAL  LIBERTY 

every  European  would  have  done  the 
same.  We  cannot  effectively  doubt  that 
such  practices  ought  to  be  stopped,  how- 
ever we  may  theorize  in  favor  of  re- 
ligious liberty. 

In  such  cases,  the  interference  with 
liberty  is  imposed  from  without  by  a 
higher  civilization.  But  the  more  com- 
mon case,  and  the  more  interesting,  is 
when  an  independent  state  interferes  on 
behalf  of  custom  against  individuals  who 
are  feeling  their  way  toward  more 
civilized  beliefs  and  institutions. 

"In  New  South  Wales,"  says  Wester- 
marck,  "the  first-born  of  every  lubra 
used  to  be  eaten  by  the  tribe  *  as  part  of 
a  religious  ceremony.'  In  the  realm  of 
Khai-muh,  in  China,  according  to  a  na- 
tive account,  it  was  customary  to  kill  and 
devour  the  eldest  son  alive.  Among  cer- 
tain tribes  in  British  Columbia  the  first 
child  is  often  sacrificed  to  the  sun.  The 
110 


INDIVIDUAL  LIBERTY 

Indians  of  Florida,  according  to  Le 
Moyne  de  Morgues,  sacrificed  the  first- 
born son  to  the  chief.  .  .  . " x 

There  are  pages  and  pages  of  such 
instances. 

There  is  nothing  analogous  to  these 
practices  among  ourselves.  When  the 
first-born  in  Florida  was  told  that  his 
king  and  country  needed  him,  this  was 
a  mere  mistake,  and  with  us  mistakes  of 
this  kind  do  not  occur.  But  it  is  inter- 
esting to  inquire  how  these  superstitions 
died  out,  in  such  cases,  for  example,  as 
that  of  Khai-muh,  where  foreign  com- 
pulsion is  improbable.  We  may  surmise 
that  some  parents,  under  the  selfish  in- 
fluence of  parental  affection,  were  led  to 
doubt  whether  the  sun  would  really  be 
angry  if  the  eldest  child  were  allowed  to 
live.  Such  rationalism  would  be  re- 
garded as  very  dangerous,  since  it  was 

i  Op.  cit.,  p.  459. 

Ill 


INDIVIDUAL  LIBERTY 

calculated  to  damage  the  harvest.  For 
generations  the  opinion  would  be  cher- 
ished in  secret  by  a  handful  of  cranks, 
who  would  not  be  able  to  act  upon  it. 
At  last,  by  concealment  or  flight,  a  few 
parents  would  save  their  children  from 
the  sacrifice.  Such  parents  would  be  re- 
garded as  lacking  all  public  spirit,  and 
as  willing  to  endanger  the  community 
for  their  private  pleasure.  But  gradu- 
ally it  would  appear  that  the  state  re- 
mained intact,  and  the  crops  were  no 
worse  than  in  former  years.  Then,  by  a 
fiction,  a  child  would  be  deemed  to  have 
been  sacrificed  if  it  was  solemnly  dedi- 
cated to  agriculture  or  some  other  work 
of  national  importance  chosen  by  the 
chief.  It  would  be  many  generations  be- 
fore the  child  would  be  allowed  to  choose 
its  own  occupation  after  it  had  grown 
old  enough  to  know  its  own  tastes  and 
capacities.  And  during  all  those  gen- 
112 


INDIVIDUAL  LIBERTY 

erations,  children  would  be  reminded 
that  only  an  act  of  grace  had  allowed 
them  to  live  at  all,  and  would  exist  un- 
der the  shadow  of  a  purely  imaginary 
duty  to  the  state. 

The  position  of  those  parents  who  first 
disbelieved  in  the  utility  of  infant  sac- 
rifice illustrates  all  the  difficulties  which 
arise  in  connection  with  the  adjustment 
of  individual  freedom  to  public  control. 
The  authorities,  believing  the  sacrifice 
necessary  for  the  good  of  the  commu- 
nity, were  bound  to  insist  upon  it;  the 
parents,  believing  it  useless,  were 
equally  bound  to  do  everything  in  their 
power  toward  saving  the  child.  How 
ought  both  parties  to  act  in  such  a  case  ? 

The  duty  of  the  skeptical  parent  is 
plain:  to  save  the  child  by  any  possible 
means,  to  preach  the  uselessness  of  the 
sacrifice  in  season  and  out  of  season,  and 
to  endure  patiently  whatever  penalty  the 
113 


law  may  inflict  for  evasion.  But  the 
duty  of  the  authorities  is  far  less  clear. 
So  long  as  they  remain  firmly  persuaded 
that  the  universal  sacrifice  of  the  first- 
born is  indispensable,  they  are  bound  to 
persecute  those  who  seek  to  undermine 
this  belief.  But  they  will,  if  they  are 
conscientious,  very  carefully  examine 
the  arguments  of  opponents,  and  be  will- 
ing in  advance  to  admit  that  these  argu- 
ments may  be  sound.  They  will  care- 
fully search  their  own  hearts  to  see 
whether  hatred  of  children  or  pleasure 
in  cruelty  has  anything  to  do  with  their 
belief.  They  will  remember  that  in  the 
past  history  of  Khai-muh  there  are  in- 
numerable instances  t  of  beliefs,  now 
known  to  be  false,  on  account  of  which 
those  who  disagreed  with  the  prevalent 
view  were  put  to  death.  Finally  they 
will  reflect  that,  though  errors  which  are 
traditional  are  often  wide-spread,  new 
114 


beliefs  seldom  win  acceptance  unless 
they  are  nearer  to  the  truth  than  what 
they  replace ;  and  they  will  conclude  that 
a  new  belief  is  probably  either  an  ad- 
vance, or  so  unlikely  to  become  common 
as  to  be  innocuous.  All  these  considera- 
tions will  make  them  hesitate  before  they 
resort  to  punishment. 

ii 

The  study  of  past  times  and  uncivil- 
ized races  makes  it  clear  beyond  ques- 
tion that  the  customary  beliefs  of  tribes 
or  nations  are  almost  invariably  false. 
It  is  difficult  to  divest  ourselves  com- 
pletely of  the  customary  beliefs  of  our 
own  age  and  nation,  but  it  is  not  very 
difficult  to  achieve  a  certain  degree  of 
doubt  in  regard  to  them.  The  Inquisitor 
who  burnt  men  at  the  stake  was  acting 
with  true  humanity  if  all  his  beliefs  were 
correct ;  but  if  they  were  in  error  at  any 
115 


\JNDIVIDUAL  LIBERTY 

point,  he  was  inflicting  a  wholly  unneces- 
sary cruelty.  A  good  working  maxim 
in  such  matters  is  this:  Do  not  trust 
customary  beliefs  so  far  as  to  perform 
actions  which  must  be  disastrous  unless 
the  beliefs  in  question  are  wholly  true. 
The  world  would  be  utterly  bad,  in  the 
opinion  of  the  average  Englishman,  un- 
less he  could  say  "Britannia  rules  the 
waves";  in  the  opinion  of  the  average 
German,  unless  he  could  say  "Deutsch- 
land  iiber  alles."  For  the  sake  of  these 
beliefs,  they  are  willing  to  destroy  Eu- 
ropean civilization.  If  the  beliefs  should 
happen  to  be  false,  their  action  is  re- 
grettable. 

One  fact  which  emerges  from  these 
considerations  is  that  no  obstacle  should 
be  placed  in  the  way  of  thought  and  its 
expression,  nor  yet  in  the  way  of  state- 
ments of  fact.  This  was  formerly  com- 
mon ground  among  liberal  thinkers, 
116 


INDIVIDUAL  LIBERTY 

though  it  was  never  quite  realized  in  the 
practice  of  civilized  countries.  But  it 
has  recently  become,  throughout  Eu- 
rope, a  dangerous  paradox,  on  account 
of  which  men  suffer  imprisonment  or 
starvation.  For  this  reason  it  has  again 
become  worth  stating.  The  grounds  for 
it  are  so  evident  that  I  should  be  ashamed 
to  repeat  them  if  they  were  not  univer- 
sally ignored.  But  in  the  actual  world 
it  is  very  necessary  to  repeat  them. 

To  attain  complete  truth  is  not  given 
to  mortals,  but  to  advance  toward  it  by 
successive  steps  is  not  impossible.  On 
any  matter  of  general  interest,  there  is 
usually,  in  any  given  community  at  any 
given  time,  a  received  opinion,  which  is 
accepted  as  a  matter  of  course  by  all 
who  give  no  special  thought  to  the  mat- 
ter. Any  questioning  of  the  received 
opinion  rouses  hostility,  for  a  number 
of  reasons. 

117 


INDIVIDUAL  LIBERTY 

The  most  important  of  these  is  the 
instinct  of  conventionality,  which  exists 
in  all  gregarious  animals  and  often  leads 
them  to  put  to  death  any  markedly  pecul- 
iar member  of  the  herd. 

The  next  most  important  is  the  feel- 
ing of  insecurity  aroused  by  doubt  as 
to  the  beliefs  by  which  we  are  in  the  habit 
of  regulating  our  lives.  Whoever  has 
tried  to  explain  the  philosophy  of  Berke- 
ley to  a  plain  man  will  have  seen  in  its 
unadulterated  form  the  anger  aroused 
by  this  feeling.  What  the  plain  man  de- 
rives from  Berkeley's  philosophy  at  a 
first  hearing  is  an  uncomfortable  sus- 
picion that  nothing  is  solid,  so  that  it  is 
rash  to  sit  on  a  chair  or  to  expect  the 
floor  to  sustain  us.  Because  this  sus- 
picion is  uncomfortable,  it  is  irritating, 
except  to  those  who  regard  the  whole 
argument  as  merely  nonsense.  And  in 
a  more  or  less  analogous  way  any  ques- 
118 


INDIVIDUAL  LIBERTY 

tioning  of  what  has  been  taken  for 
granted  destroys  the  feeling  of  stand- 
ing on  solid  ground,  and  produces  a  con- 
dition of  bewildered  fear. 

A  third  reason  which  makes  men  dis- 
like novel  opinions  is  that  vested  inter- 
ests are  bound  up  with  old  beliefs.  The 
long  fight  of  the  church  against  science, 
from  Giordano  Bruno  to  Darwin,  is  at- 
tributable to  this  motive  among  others. 
The  horror  of  socialism  which  existed  in 
the  remote  past  was  entirely  attribut- 
able to  this  cause.  But  it  would  be  a 
mistake  to  assume,  as  is  done  by  those 
who  seek  economic  motives  everywhere, 
that  vested  interests  are  the  principal 
source  of  anger  against  novelties  in 
thought.  If  this  were  the  case,  intellect- 
ual progress  would  be  much  more  rapid 
than  it  is. 

The  instinct  of  conventionality,  hor- 
ror of  uncertainty,  and  vested  interests, 
119 


all  militate  against  the  acceptance  of  a 
new  idea.  And  it  is  even  harder  to 

think  of  a  new  idea  than  to  get  it  ac- 

i 

cepted;  most  people  might  spend  a  life- 
time in  reflection  without  ever  making 
a  genuinely  original  discovery. 

In  view  of  all  these  obstacles,  it  is  not 
likely  that  any  society  at  any  time  will 
suffer  from  a  plethora  of  heretical  opin- 
ions. Least  of  all  is  this  likely  in  a  mod- 
ern civilized  society,  where  the  condi- 
tions of  life  are  in  constant  rapid  change, 
and  demand,  for  successful  adaptation, 
an  equally  rapid  change  in  intellectual 
outlook.  There  should  be  an  attempt, 
therefore,  to  encourage,  rather  than  dis- 
courage, the  expression  of  new  beliefs 
and  the  dissemination  of  knowledge 
tending  to  support  them.  But  the  very 
opposite  is,  in  fact,  the  case.  From 
childhood  upward,  everything  is  done  to 
make  the  minds  of  men  and  women  con- 
120 


INDIVIDUAL  LIBERTY 

ventional  and  sterile.  And  if,  by  mis- 
adventure, some  spark  of  imagination 
remains,  its  unfortunate  possessor  is 
considered  unsound  and  dangerous, 
worthy  only  of  contempt  in  time  of  peace 
and  of  prison  or  a  traitor 's  death  in  time 
of  war.  Yet  such  men  are  known  to 
have  been  in  the  past  the  chief  benefac- 
tors of  mankind,  and  are  the  very  men 
who  receive  most  honor  as  soon  as  they 
are  safely  dead. 

The  whole  realm  of  thought  and  opin- 
ion is  utterly  unsuited  to  public  con- 
trol ;  it  ought  to  be  as  free,  and  as  spon- 
taneous as  is  possible  to  those  who  know 
what  others  have  believed.  The  state 
is  justified  in  insisting  that  children  shall 
be  educated,  but  it  is  not  justified  in 
forcing  their  education  to  proceed  on  a 
uniform  plan  and  to  be  directed  to  the 
production  of  a  dead  level  of  glib  uni- 
formity. Education,  and  the  life  of  the 
121 


INDIVIDUAL  LIBERTY 

mind  generally,  is  a  matter  In  which  in- 
dividual initiative  is  the  chief  thing 
needed ;  the  function  of  the  state  should 
begin  and  end  with  insistence  on  some 
kind  of  education,  and,  if  possible,  a  kind 
which  promotes  mental  individualism, 
not  a  kind  which  happens  to  conform  to 
the  prejudices  of  government  officials. 

in 

Questions  of  practical  morals  raise 
more  difficult  problems  than  questions  of 
mere  opinion.  The  thugs  honestly  be- 
lieve it  their  duty  to  commit  murders, 
but  the  government  does  not  acquiesce. 
The  conscientious  objectors  honestly 
hold  the  opposite  opinion,  and  again  the 
government  does  not  acquiesce.  Kill- 
ing is  a  state  prerogative;  it  is  equally 
criminal  to  do  it  unbidden  and  not  to  do 
it  when  bidden.  The  same  applies  to 
theft,  unless  it  is  on  a  large  scale  or  by 
122 


INDIVIDUAL  LIBERTY 

one  who  is  already  rich.  Thugs  and 
thieves  are  men  who  use  force  in  their 
dealings  with  their  neighbors,  and  we 
may  lay  it  down  broadly  that  the  private 
use  of  force  should  be  prohibited  except 
in  rare  cases,  however  conscientious  may 
be  its  motive.  But  this  principle  will 
not  justify  compelling  men  to  use  force 
at  the  bidding  of  the  state,  when  they  do 
not  believe  it  justified  by  the  occasion. 
The  punishment  of  conscientious  object- 
ors seems  clearly  a  violation  of  individ- 
ual liberty  within  its  legitimate  sphere. 
It  is  generally  assumed  without  ques- 
tion that  the  state  has  a  right  to  pun- 
ish certain  kinds  of  sexual  irregularity. 
No  one  doubts  that  the  Mormons  sin- 
cerely believed  polygamy  to  be  a  desir- 
able practice,  yet  the  United  States  re- 
quired them  to  abandon  its  legal  recog- 
nition, and  probably  any  other  Christian 
country  would  have  done  likewise. 
123 


INDIVIDUAL  LIBERTY 

Nevertheless,  I  do  not  think  this  pro- 
hibition was  wise.  Polygamy  is  legally 
permitted  in  many  parts  of  the  world, 
but  is  not  much  practised  except  by 
chiefs  and  potentates.  If,  as  Europeans 
generally  believe,  it  is  an  undesirable 
custom,  it  is  probable  that  the  Mormons 
would  have  soon  abandoned  it,  except 
perhaps  for  a  few  men  of  exceptional 
position.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  it  had 
proved  a  successful  experiment,  the 
world  would  have  acquired  a  piece  of 
knowledge  which  it  is  now  unable  to 
possess.  I  think  in  all  such  cases  the 
law  should  only  intervene  when  there  is 
some  injury  inflicted  without  the  con- 
sent of  the  injured  person. 

It  is  obvious  that  men  and  women 
would  not  tolerate  having  their  wives  or 
husbands  selected  by  the  state,  whatever 
eugenists  might  have  to  say  in  favor  of 
such  a  plan.  In  this  it  seems  clear  that 
124 


INDIVIDUAL  LIBERTY 

ordinary  public  opinion  is  in  the  right, 
not  because  people  choose  wisely,  but 
because  any  choice  of  their  own  is  bet- 
ter than  a  forced  marriage.  What  ap- 
plies to  marriage  ought  also  to  apply  to 
the  choice  of  a  trade  or  profession;  al- 
though some  men  have  no  marked  pref- 
erences, most  men  greatly  prefer  some 
occupations  to  others,  and  are  far  more 
likely  to  be  useful  citizens  if  they  fol- 
low their  preferences  than  if  they  are 
thwarted  by  a  public  authority. 

The  case  of  the  man  who  has  an  in- 
tense conviction  that  he  ought  to  do  a 
certain  kind  of  work  is  peculiar,  and  per- 
haps not  very  common ;  but  it  is  impor- 
tant because  it  includes  some  very  im- 
portant individuals.  Joan  of  Arc  and 
Florence  Nightingale  defied  convention 
in  obedience  to  a  feeling  of  this  sort; 
reformers  and  agitators  in  unpopular 
causes,  such  as  Mazzini,  have  belonged 
125 


INDIVIDUAL  LIBERTY 

to  this  class;  so  have  many  men  of 
science.  In  cases  of  this  kind  the  in- 
dividual conviction  deserves  the  great- 
est respect,  even  if  there  seems  no  obvi- 
ous justification  for  it.  Obedience  to  the 
impulse  is  very  unlikely  to  do  much 
harm,  and  may  well  do  great  good.  The 
practical  difficulty  is  to  distinguish  such 
impulses  from  desires  which  produce 
similar  manifestations.  Many  young 
people  wish  to  be  authors  without  hav- 
ing an  impulse  to  write  any  particular 
book,  or  wish  to  be  painters  without  hav- 
ing an  impulse  to  create  any  particular 
picture.  But  a  little  experience  will 
usually  show  the  difference  between  a 
genuine  and  a  spurious  impulse;  and 
there  is  less  harm  in  indulging  the  spuri- 
ous impulse  for  a  time  than  in  thwart- 
ing the  impulse  which  is  genuine. 
Nevertheless,  the  plain  man  almost  al- 
ways has  a  tendency  to  thwart  the  genu- 
126 


INDIVIDUAL  LIBERTY 

ine  impulse,  because  it  seems  anarchic 
and  unreasonable,  and  is  seldom  able  to 
give  a  good  account  of  itself  in  advance. 
What  is  markedly  true  of  some  notable 
personalities  is  true,  in  a  lesser  degree, 
of  almost  every  individual  who  has  much 
vigor  or  force  of  life ;  there  is  an  impulse 
towards  activity  of  some  kind,  as  a  rule 
not  very  definite  in  youth,  but  growing 
gradually  more  sharply  outlined  under 
the  influence  of  education  and  oppor- 
tunity. The  direct  impulse  toward  a 
kind  of  activity  for  its  own  sake  must  be 
distinguished  from  the  desire  for  the 
expected  effects  of  the  activity.  A 
young  man  may  desire  the  rewards  of 
great  achievement  without  having  any 
spontaneous  impulse  toward  the  activi- 
ties which  lead  to  achievement.  But 
those  who  actually  achieve  much,  al- 
though they  may  desire  the  rewards, 
have  also  something  in  their  nature 
127 


INDIVIDUAL  LIBERTY 

which  inclines  them  to  choose  a  certain 
kind  of  work  as  the  road  which  they  must 
travel  if  their  ambition  is  to  be  satis- 
fied. This  artist's  impulse,  as  it  may  be 
called,  is  a  thing  of  infinite  value  to  the 
individual,  and  often  to  the  world;  to 
respect  it  in  oneself  and  in  others  makes 
up  nine  tenths  of  the  good  life.  In  most 
human  beings  it  is  rather  frail,  rather 
easily  destroyed  or  disturbed;  parents 
and  teachers  are  too  often  hostile  to  it, 
and  our  economic  system  crushes  out  its 
last  remnants  in  young  men  and  young 
women.  The  result  is  that  human  be- 
ings cease  to  be  individual,  or  to  retain 
the  native  pride  that  is  their  birthright ; 
they  become  machine-made,  tame,  con- 
venient for  the  bureaucrat  and  the 
drill-sergeant,  capable  of  being  tabulated 
in  statistics  without  anything  being 
omitted.  This  is  the  fundamental  evil 
resulting  from  lack  of  liberty;  and  it  is 
128 


INDIVIDUAL  LIBERTY 

an  evil  which  is  being  continually  inten- 
sified as  population  grows  more  dense 
and  the  machinery  of  organization  grows 
more  efficient. 

The  things  that  men  desire  are  many 
and  various:  admiration,  affection, 
power,  security,  ease,  outlets  for  energy, 
are  among  the  commonest  of  motives. 
But  such  abstractions  do  not  touch  what 
makes  the  difference  between  one  man 
and  another.  Whenever  I  go  to  the  zoo- 
logical gardens,  I  am  struck  by  the  fact 
that  all  the  movements  of  a  stork 
have  some  common  quality,  differing 
from  the  movements  of  a  parrot  or  an 
ostrich.  It  is  impossible  to  put  in  words 
what  the  common  quality  is,  and  yet  we 
feel  that  each  thing  an  animal  does  is 
the  sort  of  thing  we  might  expect  that 
animal  to  do.  This  indefinable  quality 
constitutes  the  individuality  of  the  ani- 
mal, and  gives  rise  to  the  pleasure  we 
129 


INDIVIDUAL  LIBERTY 

feel  in  watching  the  animal's  actions. 
In  a  human  being,  provided  he  has  not 
been  crushed  by  an  economic  or  govern- 
mental machine,  there  is  the  same  kind 
of  individuality,  a  something  distinctive 
without  which  no  man  or  woman  can 
achieve  much  of  importance,  or  retain 
the  full  dignity  which  is  native  to  human 
beings.  It  is  this  distinctive  individual- 
ity that  is  loved  by  the  artist,  whether 
painter  or  writer.  The  artist  himself, 
and  the  man  who  is  creative  in  no  mat- 
ter what  direction,  has  more  of  it  than 
the  average  man.  Any  society  which 
crushes  this  quality,  whether  intention- 
ally or  by  accident,  must  soon  become  ut- 
terly lifeless  and  traditional,  without 
hope  of  progress  and  without  any  pur- 
pose in  its  being.  To  preserve  and 
strengthen  the  impulse  that  makes  in- 
dividuality should  be  the  foremost  object 
of  all  political  institutions. 
130 


INDIVIDUAL  LIBERTY 

IV 

We  now  arrive  at  certain  general  prin- 
ciples in  regard  to  individual  liberty  and 
public  control. 

The  greater  part  of  human  impulses 
may  be  divided  into  two  classes,  those 
which  are  possessive  and  those  which  are 
constructive  or  creative.  Social  institu- 
tions are  the  garments  or  embodiments 
of  impulses,  and  may  be  classified 
roughly  according  to  the  impulses  which 
they  embody.  Property  is  the  direct  ex- 
pression of  possessiveness ;  science  and 
art  are  among  the  most  direct  expres- 
sions of  creativeness.  Possessiveness  is 
either  defensive  or  aggressive;  it  seeks 
either  to  retain  against  a  robber,  or  to 
acquire  from  a  present  holder.  In  either 
case  an  attitude  of  hostility  toward 
others  is  of  its  essence.  It  would  be 
a  mistake  to  suppose  that  defensive 
131 


INDIVIDUAL  LIBERTY 

possessiveness  is  always  justifiable, 
while  the  aggressive  kind  is  always 
blameworthy;  where  there  is  great  in- 
justice in  the  status  quo,  the  exact  op- 
posite may  be  the  case,  and  ordinarily 
neither  is  justifiable. 

State  interference  with  the  actions  of 
individuals  is  necessitated  by  possessive- 
ness.  Some  goods  can  be  acquired  or 
retained  by  force,  while  others  cannot. 
A  wife  can  be  acquired  by  force,  as  the 
Romans  acquired  the  Sabine  women ;  but 
a  wife's  affection  cannot  be  acquired  in 
this  way.  There  is  no  record  that  the 
Romans  desired  the  affection  of  the  Sa- 
bine women ;  and  those  in  whom  posses- 
sive impulses  are  strong  tend  to  care 
chiefly  for  the  goods  that  force  can  se- 
cure. All  material  goods  belong  to  this 
class.  Liberty  in  regard  to  such  goods, 
if  it  were  unrestricted,  would  make  the 
strong  rich  and  the  weak  poor.  In  a 
132 


INDIVIDUAL  LIBERTY 

capitalistic  society,  owing  to  the  partial 
restraints  imposed  by  law,  it  makes  cun- 
ning men  rich  and  honest  men  poor,  be- 
cause the  force  of  the  state  is  put  at 
men 's  disposal,  not  according  to  any  just 
or  rational  principle,  but  according  to  a 
set  of  traditional  maxims  of  which  the 
explanation  is  purely  historical. 

In  all  that  concerns  possession  and  the 
use  of  force,  unrestrained  liberty  in- 
volves anarchy  and  injustice.  Freedom 
to  kill,  freedom  to  rob,  freedom  to  de- 
fraud, no  longer  belong  to  individuals, 
though  they  still  belong  to  great  states, 
and  are  exercised  by  them  in  the  name 
of  patriotism.  Neither  individuals  nor 
states  ought  to  be  free  to  exert  force  on 
their  own  initiative,  except  in  such  sud- 
den emergencies  as  will  subsequently  be 
admitted  in  justification  by  a  court  of 
law.  The  reason  for  this  is  that  the 
exertion  of  force  by  one  individual 
133 


INDIVIDUAL  LIBERTY 

against  another  is  always  an  evil  on  both 
sides,  and  can  only  be  tolerated  when  it  is 
compensated  by  some  overwhelming  re- 
sultant good.  In  order  to  minimize  the 
amount  of  force  actually  exerted  in  the 
world,  it  is  necessary  that  there  should 
be  a  public  authority,  a  repository  of 
practically  irresistible  force,  whose  func- 
tion should  be  primarily  to  repress  the 
private  use  of  force.  A  use  of  force  is 
private  when  it  is  exerted  by  one  of  the 
interested  parties,  or  by  his  friends  or 
accomplices,  not  by  a  public  neutral 
authority  according  to  some  rule  which 
is  intended  to  be  in  the  public  interest. 
The  regime  of  private  property  under 
which  we  live  does  much  too  little  to 
restrain  the  private  use  of  force.  When 
a  man  owns  a  piece  of  land,  for  example, 
he  may  use  force  against  trespassers, 
though  they  must  not  use  force  against 
him.  It  is  clear  that  some  restriction 
134 


INDIVIDUAL  LIBERTY 

of  the  liberty  of  trespass  is  necessary  for 
the  cultivation  of  the  land.  But  if  such 
powers  are  to  be  given  to  an  individual, 
the  state  ought  to  satisfy  itself  that  he 
occupies  no  more  land  than  he  is  war- 
ranted in  occupying  in  the  public  inter- 
est, and  that  the  share  of  the  produce  of 
the  land  that  comes  to  him  is  no  more 
than  a  just  reward  for  his  labors.  Prob- 
ably the  only  way  in  which  such  ends 
can  be  achieved  is  by  state  ownership  of 
land.  The  possessors  of  land  and  capi- 
tal are  able  at  present,  by  economic  pres- 
sure, to  use  force  against  those  who  have 
no  possessions.  This  force  is  sanctioned 
by  law,  while  force  exercised  by  the  poor 
against  the  rich  is  illegal.  Such  a  state 
of  things  is  unjust,  and  does  not  dimin- 
ish the  use  of  private  force  as  much  as 
it  might  be  diminished. 

The  whole  realm  of  the  possessive  im- 
pulses, and  of  the  use  of  force  to  which 
135 


INDIVIDUAL  LIBERTY 

they  give  rise,  stands  in  need  of  control 
by  a  public  neutral  authority,  in  the  in- 
terests of  liberty  no  less  than  of  justice. 
Within  a  nation,  this  public  authority 
will  naturally  be  the  state;  in  relations 
between  nations,  if  the  present  anarchy 
is  to  cease,  it  will  have  to  be  some  in- 
ternational parliament. 

But  the  motive  underlying  the  public 
control  of  men's  possessive  impulses 
should  always  be  the  increase  of  liberty, 
both  by  the  prevention  of  private  tyr- 
anny and  by  the  liberation  of  creative 
impulses.  If  public  control  is  not  to  do 
more  harm  than  good,  it  must  be  so  ex- 
ercised as  to  leave  the  utmost  freedom 
of  private  initiative  in  all  those  ways 
that  do  not  involve  the  private  use  of 
force.  In  this  respect  all  governments 
have  always  failed  egregiously,  and 
there  is  no  evidence  that  they  are  im- 
proving. 

136 


INDIVIDUAL  LIBERTY 

The  creative  impulses,  unlike  those 
that  are  possessive,  are  directed  to  ends 
in  which  one  man's  gain  is  not  another 
man's  loss.  The  man  who  makes  a 
scientific  discovery  or  writes  a  poem  is 
enriching  others  at  the  same  time  as 
himself.  Any  increase  in  knowledge  or 
good- will  is  a  gain  to  all  who  are  affected 
by  it,  not  only  to  the  actual  possessor. 
Those  who  feel  the  joy  of  life  are  a  hap- 
piness to  others  as  well  as  to  themselves. 
Force  cannot  create  such  things,  though 
it  can  destroy  them ;  no  principle  of  dis- 
tributive justice  applies  to  them,  since 
the  gain  of  each  is  the  gain  of  all.  For 
these  reasons,  the  creative  part  of  a 
man's  activity  ought  to  be  as  free  as 
possible  from  all  public  control,  in  or- 
der that  it  may  remain  spontaneous  and 
full  of  vigor.  The  only  function  of  the 
state  in  regard  to  this  part  of  the  in- 
dividual life  should  be  to  do  everything 
137 


INDIVIDUAL  LIBERTY 

possible  toward  providing  outlets  and 
opportunities. 

In  every  life  a  part  is  governed  by 
the  community,  and  a  part  by  private 
initiative.  The  part  governed  by  pri- 
vate initiative  is  greatest  in  the  most  im- 
portant individuals,  such  as  men  of  gen- 
ius and  creative  thinkers.  This  part 
ought  only  to  be  restricted  when  it  is 
predatory;  otherwise,  everything  ought 
to  be  done  to  make  it  as  great  and  as 
vigorous  as  possible.  The  object  of 
education  ought  not  to  be  to  make  all 
men  think  alike,  but  to  make  each  think 
in  the  way  which  is  the  fullest  expression 
of  his  own  personality.  In  the  choice 
of  a  means  of  livelihood  all  young  men 
and  young  women  ought,  as  far  as  possi- 
ble, to  be  able  to  choose  what  is  attrac- 
tive to  them;  if  no  money-making  occu- 
pation is  attractive,  they  ought  to  be  free 
to  do  little  work  for  little  pay,  and  spend 
138 


INDIVIDUAL  LIBERTY 

their  leisure  as  they  choose.  Any  kind 
of  censure  on  freedom  of  thought  or  on 
the  dissemination  of  knowledge  is,  of 
course,  to  be  condemned  utterly. 

Huge  organizations,  both  political  and 
economic,  are  one  of  the  distinguishing 
characteristics  of  the  modern  world. 
These  organizations  have  immense 
power,  and  often  use  their  power  to  dis- 
courage originality  in  thought  and  ac- 
tion. They  ought,  on  the  contrary,  to 
give  the  freest  scope  that  is  possible 
without  producing  anarchy  or  violent 
conflict.  They  ought  not  to  take  cogni- 
zance of  any  part  of  a  man's  life  except 
what  is  concerned  with  the  legitimate 
objects  of  public  control,  namely,  posses- 
sions and  the  use  of  force.  And  they 
ought,  by  devolution,  to  leave  as  large  a 
share  of  control  as  possible  in  the  hands 
of  individuals  and  small  groups.  If 
this  is  not  done,  the  men  at  the  head  of 
139 


INDIVIDUAL  LIBERTY 

these  vast  organizations  will  infallibly 
become  tyrannous  through  the  habit  of 
excessive  power,  and  will  in  time  inter- 
fere in  ways  that  crush  out  individual 
initiative. 

The  problem  which  faces  the  modern 
world  is  the  combination  of  individual 
initiative  with  the  increase  in  the  scope 
and  size  of  organizations.  Unless  it  is 
solved,  individuals  will  grow  less  and  less 
full  of  life  and  vigor,  and  more  and  more 
passively  submissive  to  conditions  im- 
posed upon  them.  A  society  composed 
of  such  individuals  cannot  be  progres- 
sive or  add  much  to  the  world's  stock 
of  mental  and  spiritual  possessions. 
Only  personal  liberty  and  the  encourage- 
ment of  initiative  can  secure  these 
things.  Those  who  resist  authority 
when  it  encroaches  upon  the  legitimate 
sphere  of  the  individual  are  performing 
a  service  to  society,  however  little  so- 
140 


INDIVIDUAL  LIBERTY 

ciety  may  value  it.  In  regard  to  the 
past,  this  is  universally  acknowledged; 
but  it  is  no  less  true  in  regard  to  the 
present  and  the  future. 


141 


NATIONAL  INDEPENDENCE 
AND  INTERNATIONALISM 


NATIONAL   INDEPENDENCE   AND   INTER- 
NATIONALISM 

IN  the  relations  between  states,  as  in 
the  relations  of  groups  within  a 
single  state,  what  is  to  be  desired  is  in- 
dependence for  each  as  regards  internal 
affairs,  and  law  rather  than  private 
force  as  regards  external  affairs.  But 
as  regards  groups  within  a  state,  it  is 
internal  independence  that  must  be  em- 
phasized, since  that  is  what  is  lacking; 
subjection  to  law  has  been  secured,  on 
the  whole,  since  the  end  of  the  Middle 
Ages.  In  the  relations  between  states, 
on  the- contrary,  it  is  law  and  a  central 
government  that  are  lacking,  since  in- 
dependence exists  for  external  as  for 
145 


NATIONAL  INDEPENDENCE 

internal  affairs.  The  stage  we  have 
reached  in  the  affairs  of  Europe  corre- 
sponds to  the  stage  reached  in  our  in- 
ternal affairs  during  the  Wars  of  the 
Roses,  when  turbulent  barons  frustrated 
the  attempt  to  make  them  keep  the 
king's  peace.  Thus,  although  the  goal 
is  the  same  in  the  two  cases,  the  steps  to 
be  taken  in  order  to  achieve  it  are  quite 
different. 

There  can  be  no  good  international 
system  until  the  boundaries  of  states  co- 
incide as  nearly  as  possible  with  the 
boundaries  of  nations. 

But  it  is  not  easy  to  say  what  we 
mean  by  a  nation.  Are  the  Irish  a  na- 
tion? Home  Rulers  say  yes,  Unionists 
say  no.  Are  the  Ulstermen  a  nation? 
Unionists  say  yes,  Home  Rulers  say  no. 
In  all  such  cases  it  is  a  party  question 
whether  we  are  to  call  a  group  a  nation 
or  not.  A  German  will  tell  you  that  the 
146 


NATIONAL  INDEPENDENCE 

Russian  Poles  are  a  nation,  but  as  for 
the  Prussian  Poles,  they,  of  course,  are 
part  of  Prussia.  Professors  can  always 
be  hired  to  prove,  by  arguments  of  race 
or  language  or  history,  that  a  group 
about  which  there  is  a  dispute  is,  or  is 
not,  a  nation,  as  may  be  desired  by  those 
whom  the  professors  serve.  If  we  are 
to  avoid  all  these  controversies,  we  must 
first  of  all  endeavor  to  find  some  defini- 
tion of  a  nation. 

A  nation  is  not  to  be  defined  by  affini- 
ties of  language  or  a  common  historical 
origin,  though  these  things  often  help  to 
produce  a  nation.  Switzerland  is  a  na- 
tion, despite  diversities  of  race,  re- 
ligion, and  language.  England  and 
Scotland  now  form  one  nation,  though 
they  did  not  do  so  at  the  time  of  the 
Civil  War.  This  is  shown  by  Crom- 
well's saying,  in  the  height  of  the  con- 
flict, that  he  would  rather  be  subject  to 
147 


NATIONAL  INDEPENDENCE 

the  domain  of  the  royalists  than  to  that 
of  the  Scotch.  Great  Britain  was  one 
state  before  it  was  one  nation;  on  the 
other  hand,  Germany  was  one  nation  be- 
fore it  was  one  state. 

What  constitutes  a  nation  is  a  senti- 
ment and  an  instinct,  a  sentiment  of 
similarity  and  an  instinct  of  belonging 
to  the  same  group  or  herd.  The  instinct 
is  an  extension  of  the  instinct  which  con- 
stitutes a  flock  of  sheep,  or  any  other 
group  of  gregarious  animals.  The  sen- 
timent which  goes  with  this  is  like  a 
milder  and  more  extended  form  of  fam- 
ily feeling.  When  we  return  to  England 
after  being  on  the  Continent,  we  feel 
something  friendly  in  the  familiar  ways, 
and  it  is  easy  to  believe  that  English- 
men on  the  whole  are  virtuous,  while 
many  foreigners  are  full  of  designing 
wickedness. 

Such  feelings  make  it  easy  to  organize 
148 


NATIONAL  INDEPENDENCE 

a  nation  into  a  state.  It  is  not  difficult, 
as  a  rule,  to  acquiesce  in  the  orders  of 
a  national  government.  We  feel  that  it 
is  our  government,  and  that  its  decrees 
are  more  or  less  the  same  as  those  which 
we  should  have  given  if  we  ourselves 
had  been  the  governors.  There  is  an  in- 
stinctive and  usually  unconscious  sense 
of  a  common  purpose  animating  the 
members  of  a  nation.  This  becomes  es- 
pecially vivid  when  there  is  war  or  a 
danger  of  war.  Any  one  who,  at  such  a 
time,  stands  out  against  the  orders  of 
his  government  feels  an  inner  conflict 
quite  different  from  any  that  he  would 
feel  in  standing  out  against  the  orders  of 
a  foreign  government  in  whose  power 
he  might  happen  to  find  himself.  If  he 
stands  out,  he  does  so  with  some  more 
or  less  conscious  hope  that  his  govern- 
ment may  in  time  come  to  think  as  he 
does;  whereas,  in  standing  out  against 
149 


NATIONAL  INDEPENDENCE 

a  foreign  government,  no  such  hope  is 
necessary.  This  group  instinct,  how- 
ever it  may  have  arisen,  is  what  con- 
stitutes a  nation,  and  what  makes  it 
important  that  the  boundaries  of  na- 
tions should  also  be  the  boundaries  of 
states. 

National  sentiment  is  a  fact,  and 
should  be  taken  account  of  by  institu- 
tions. When  it  is  ignored,  it  is  intensi- 
fied and  becomes  a  source  of  strife.  It 
can  only  be  rendered  harmless  by  being 
given  free  play,  so  long  as  it  is  not  preda- 
tory. But  it  is  not,  in  itself,  a  good  or 
admirable  feeling.  There  is  nothing  ra- 
tional and  nothing  desirable  in  a  limita- 
tion of  sympathy  which  confines  it  to  a 
fragment  of  the  human  race.  Diversi- 
ties of  manners  and  customs  and  tradi- 
tions are,  on  the  whole,  a  good  thing, 
since  they  enable  different  nations  to 
produce  different  types  of  excellence. 
150 


NATIONAL  INDEPENDENCE 

But  in  national  feeling  there  is  always 
latent  or  explicit  an  element  of  hostility 
to  foreigners.  National  feeling,  as  we 
know  it,  could  not  exist  in  a  nation  which 
was  wholly  free  from  external  pressure 
of  a  hostile  kind. 

And  group  feeling  produces  a  limited 
and  often  harmful  kind  of  morality. 
Men  come  to  identify  the  good  with  what 
serves  the  interests  of  their  own  group, 
and  the  bad  with  what  works  against 
those  interests,  even  if  it  should  hap- 
pen to  be  in  the  interests  of  mankind  as 
a  whole.  This  group  morality  is  very 
much  in  evidence  during  war,  and  is 
taken  for  granted  in  men's  ordinary 
thought.  Although  almost  all  English- 
men consider  the  defeat  of  Germany  de- 
sirable for  the  good  of  the  world,  yet 
nevertheless  most  of  them  honor  a  Ger- 
man for  fighting  for  his  country,  because 
it  has  not  occurred  to  them  that  his  ac- 
151 


NATIONAL  INDEPENDENCE 

tions  ought  to  be  guided  by  a  morality 
higher  than  that  of  the  group. 

A  man  does  right,  as  a  rule,  to  have 
his  thoughts  more  occupied  with  the  in- 
terests of  his  own  nation  than  with  those 
of  others,  because  his  actions  are  more 
likely  to  affect  his  own  nation.  But  in 
time  of  war,  and  in  all  matters  which 
are  of  equal  concern  to  other  nations  and 
to  his  own,  a  man  ought  to  take  account 
of  the  universal  welfare,  and  not  allow 
his  survey  to  be  limited  by  the  interest, 
or  supposed  interest,  of  his  own  group 
or  nation. 

So  long  as  national  feeling  exists,  it 
is  very  important  that  each  nation  should 
be  self-governing  as  regards  its  internal 
affairs.  Government  can  only  be  car- 
ried on  by  force  and  tyranny  if  its  sub- 
jects view  it  with  hostile  eyes,  and  they 
will  so  view  it  if  they  feel  that  it  belongs 
to  an  alien  nation.  This  principle  meets 
152 


NATIONAL  INDEPENDENCE 

with  difficulties  in  cases  where  men  of 
different  nations  live  side  by  side  in  the 
same  area,  as  happens  in  some  parts  of 
the  Balkans.  There  are  also  difficulties 
in  regard  to  places  which,  for  some  geo- 
graphical reason,  are  of  great  interna- 
tional importance,  such  as  the  Suez  Canal 
and  the  Panama  Canal.  In  such  cases 
the  purely  local  desires  of  the  inhabi- 
tants may  have  to  give  way  before  larger 
interests.  But  in  general,  at  any  rate  as 
applied  to  civilized  communities,  the 
principle  that  the  boundaries  of  nations 
ought  to  coincide  with  the  boundaries  of 
states  has  very  few  exceptions. 

This  principle,  however,  does  not  de- 
cide how  the  relations  between  states  are 
to  be  regulated,  or  how  a  conflict  of  in- 
terests between  rival  states  is  to  be  de- 
cided. At  present,  every  great  state 
claims  absolute  sovereignty,  not  only  in 
regard  to  its  internal  affairs  but  also  in 
153 


NATIONAL  INDEPENDENCE 

regard  to  its  external  actions.  This 
claim  to  absolute  sovereignty  leads  it 
into  conflict  with  similar  claims  on  the 
part  of  other  great  states.  Such  con- 
flicts at  present  can  only  be  decided  by 
war  or  diplomacy,  and  diplomacy  is  in 
essence  nothing  but  the  threat  of  war. 
There  is  no  more  justification  for  the 
claim  to  absolute  sovereignty  on  the  part 
of  a  state  than  there  would  be  for  a  sim- 
ilar claim  on  the  part  of  an  individual. 
The  claim  to  absolute  sovereignty  is,  in 
effect,  a  claim  that  all  external  affairs 
are  to  be  regulated  purely  by  force,  and 
that  when  two  nations  or  groups  of  na- 
tions are  interested  in  a  question,  the 
decision  shall  depend  solely  upon  which 
of  them  is,  or  is  believed  to  be,  the 
stronger.  This  is  nothing  but  primitive 
anarchy,  "the  war  of  all  against  all," 
which  Hobbes  asserted  to  be  the  original 
state  of  mankind. 

154 


NATIONAL  INDEPENDENCE 

There  cannot  be  secure  peace  in  the 
world,  or  any  decision  of  international 
questions  according  to  international  law, 
until  states  are  willing  to  part  with  their 
absolute  sovereignty  as  regards  their  ex- 
ternal relations,  and  to  leave  the  deci- 
sion in  such  matters  to  some  interna- 
tional instrument  of  government.1  An 
international  government  will  have  to  be 
legislative  as  well  as  judicial.  It  is  not 
enough  that  there  should  be  a  Hague 
tribunal,  deciding  matters  according  to 
some  already  existing  system  of  interna- 
tional law ;  it  is  necessary  also  that  there 
should  be  a  body  capable  of  enacting  in- 
ternational law,  and  this  body  will  have 
to  have  the  power  of  transferring  terri- 
tory from  one  state  to  another,  when  it 
is  persuaded  that  adequate  grounds  ex- 

i  For  detailed  scheme  of  international  government 
see  "International  Government,"  by  L.  Woolf.  Allen 
&  Unwin. 

155 


NATIONAL  INDEPENDENCE 

ist  for  such  a  transference.  Friends  of 
peace  will  make  a  mistake  if  they  unduly 
glorify  the  status  quo.  Some  nations 
grow,  while  others  dwindle;  the  popu- 
lation of  an  area  may  change  its  char- 
acter by  emigration  and  immigration. 
There  is  no  good  reason  why  states 
should  resent  changes  in  their  boun- 
daries under  such  conditions,  and  if  no 
international  authority  has  power  to 
make  changes  of  this  kind,  the  tempta- 
tions to  war  will  sometimes  become  irre- 
sistible. 

The  international  authority  ought  to 
possess  an  army  and  navy,  and  these 
ought  to  be  the  only  army  and  navy  in 
existence.  The  only  legitimate  use  of 
force  is  to  diminish  the  total  amount  of 
force  exercised  in  the  world.  So  long 
as  men  are  free  to  indulge  their  preda- 
tory instincts,  some  men  or  groups  of 
men  will  take  advantage  of  this  freedom 
156 


NATIONAL  INDEPENDENCE 

for  oppression  and  robbery.  Just  as  the 
police  are  necessary  to  prevent  the  use 
of  force  by  private  citizens,  so  an  inter- 
national police  will  be  necessary  to  pre- 
vent the  lawless  use  of  force  by  separate 
states. 

But  I  think  it  is  reasonable  to  hope 
that  if  ever  an  international  govern- 
ment, possessed  of  the  only  army  and 
navy  in  the  world,  came  into  existence, 
the  need  of  force  to  exact  obedience  to 
its  decisions  would  be  very  temporary. 
In  a  short  time  the  benefits  resulting 
from  the  substitution  of  law  for  anarchy 
would  become  so  obvious  that  the  inter- 
national government  would  acquire  an 
unquestioned  authority,  and  no  state 
would  dream  of  rebelling  against  its  de- 
cisions. As  soon  as  this  stage  had  been 
reached,  the  international  army  and 
navy  would  become  unnecessary. 

"We  have  still  a  very  long  road  to 
157 


NATIONAL  INDEPENDENCE 

travel  before  we  arrive  at  the  establish- 
ment of  an  international  authority,  but 
it  is  not  very  difficult  to  foresee  the 
steps  by  which  this  result  will  be  gradu- 
ally reached.  There  is  likely  to  be  a 
continual  increase  in  the  practice  of  sub- 
mitting disputes  to  arbitration,  and  in 
the  realization  that  the  supposed  con- 
flicts of  interest  between  different  states 
are  mainly  illusory.  Even  where  there 
is  a  real  conflict  of  interest,  it  must  in 
time  become  obvious  that  neither  of  the 
states  concerned  would  suffer  as  much 
by  giving  way  as  by  fighting.  With  the 
progress  of  inventions,  war,  when  it  does 
occur,  is  bound  to  become  increasingly 
destructive.  The  civilized  races  of  the 
world  are  faced  with  the  alternative  of 
cooperation  or  mutual  destruction.  The 
present  war  is  making  this  alternative 
daily  more  evident.  And  it  is  difficult  to 
believe  that,  when  the  enmities  which  it 
158 


NATIONAL  INDEPENDENCE 

has  generated  have  had  time  to  cool,  civ- 
ilized men  will  deliberately  choose  to  de- 
stroy civilization,  rather  than  acquiesce 
in  the  abolition  of  war. 

The  matters  in  which  the  interests  of 
nations  are  supposed  to  clash  are  mainly 
three :  tariffs,  which  are  a  delusion ;  the 
exploitation  of  inferior  races,  which  is 
a 'crime;  pride  of  power  and  dominion, 
which  is  a  schoolboy  folly. 

The  economic  argument  against  tariffs 
is  familiar,  and  I  shall  not  repeat  it. 
The  only  reason  why  it  fails  to  carry 
conviction  is  the  enmity  between  nations. 
Nobody  proposes  to  set  up  a  tariff  be- 
tween England  and  Scotland,  or  between 
Lancashire  and  Yorkshire.  Yet  the  ar- 
guments by  which  tariffs  between  na- 
tions are  supported  might  be  used  just 
as  well  to  defend  tariffs  between  coun- 
ties. Universal  free  trade  would  in- 
dubitably be  of  economic  benefit  to  man- 
159 


NATIONAL  INDEPENDENCE 

kind,  and  would  be  adopted  to-morrow 
if  it  were  not  for  the  hatred  and  suspi- 
cion which  nations  feel  one  toward  an- 
other. From  the  point  of  view  of  pre- 
serving the  peace  of  the  world,  free 
trade  between  the  different  civilized 
states  is  not  so  important  as  the  open 
door  in  their  dependencies.  The  desire 
for  exclusive  markets  is  one  of  the  most 
potent  causes  of  war. 

Exploiting  what  are  called  "  inferior 
races"  has  become  one  of  the  main  ob- 
jects of  European  statecraft.  It  is  not 
only,  or  primarily,  trade  that  is  desired, 
but  opportunities  for  investment ;  finance 
is  more  concerned  in  the  matter  than  in- 
dustry. Eival  diplomatists  are  very 
often  the  servants,  conscious  or  uncon- 
scious, of  rival  groups  of  financiers. 
The  financiers,  though  themselves  of  no 
particular  nation,  understand  the  art  of 
appealing  to  national  prejudice,  and  of 
160 


NATIONAL  INDEPENDENCE 

inducing  the  taxpayer  to  incur  expendi- 
ture of  which  they  reap  the  benefit.  The 
evils  which  they  produce  at  home,  and 
the  devastation  that  they  spread  among 
the  races  whom  they  exploit,  are  part 
of  the  price  which  the  world  has  to  pay 
for  its  acquiescence  in  the  capitalist 
regime. 

But  neither  tariffs  nor  financiers 
would  be  able  to  cause  serious  trouble, 
if  it  were  not  for  the  sentiment  of  na- 
tional pride.  National  pride  might  be 
on  the  whole  beneficent,  if  it  took  the  di- 
rection of  emulation  in  the  things  that 
are  important  to  civilization.  If  we 
prided  ourselves  upon  our  poets,  our  men 
of  science,  or  the  justice  and  humanity 
of  our  social  system,  we  might  find  in 
national  pride  a  stimulus  to  useful  en- 
deavors. But  such  matters  play  a  very 
small  part.  National  pride,  as  it  exists 
now,  is  almost  exclusively  concerned  with 
161 


NATIONAL  INDEPENDENCE 

power  and  dominion,  with  the  extent  of 
territory  that  a  nation  owns,  and  with 
its  capacity  for  enforcing  its  will  against 
the  opposition  of  other  nations.  In  this 
it  is  reinforced  by  group  morality.  To 
nine  citizens  out  of  ten  it  seems  self- 
evident,  whenever  the  will  of  their  own 
nation  clashes  with  that  of  another,  that 
their  own  nation  must  be  in  the  right. 
Even  if  it  were  not  in  the  right  on  the 
particular  issue,  yet  it  stands  in  general 
for  so  much  nobler  ideals  than  those 
represented  by  the  other  nation  to  the 
dispute,  that  any  increase  in  its  power 
is  bound  to  be  for  the  good  of  mankind. 
Since  all  nations  equally  believe  this  of 
themselves,  all  are  equally  ready  to  in- 
sist upon  the  victory  of  their  own  side  in 
any  dispute  in  which  they  believe  that 
they  have  a  good  hope  of  victory.  While 
this  temper  persists,  the  hope  of  inter- 
national cooperation  must  remain  dim. 
162 


NATIONAL  INDEPENDENCE 

If  men  could  divest  themselves  of  the 
sentiment  of  rivalry  and  hostility  be- 
tween different  nations,  they  would  per- 
ceive that  the  matters  in  which  the  in- 
terests of  different  nations  coincide  im- 
measurably outweigh  those  in  which  they 
clash;  they  would  perceive,  to  begin 
with,  that  trade  is  not  to  be  compared 
to  warfare ;  that  the  man  who  sells  you 
goods  is  not  doing  you  an  injury.  No 
one  considers  that  the  butcher  and  the 
baker  are  his  enemies  because  they  drain 
him  of  money.  Yet  as  soon  as  goods 
come  from  a  foreign  country,  we  are 
asked  to  believe  that  we  suffer  a  terrible 
injury  in  purchasing  them.  No  one  re- 
members that  it  is  by  means  of  goods 
exported  that  we  purchase  them.  But 
in  the  country  to  which  we  export,  it  is 
the  goods  we  send  which  are  thought 
dangerous,  and  the  goods  we  buy  are 
forgotten.  The  whole  conception  of 
163 


NATIONAL  INDEPENDENCE 

trade,  which  has  been  forced  upon  us 
by  manufacturers  who  dreaded  foreign 
competition,  by  trusts  which  desired  to 
secure  monopolies,  and  by  economists 
poisoned  by  the  virus  of  nationalism,  is 
totally  and  absolutely  false.  Trade  re- 
sults simply  from  division  of  labor.  A 
man  cannot  himself  make  all  the  goods 
of  which  he  has  need,  and  therefore  he 
must  exchange  his  produce  with  that  of 
other  people.  What  applies  to  the  in- 
dividual, applies  in  exactly  the  same  way 
to  the  nation.  There  is  no  reason  to 
desire  that  a  nation  should  itself  pro- 
duce all  the  goods  of  which  it  has  need ; 
it  is  better  that  it  should  specialize  upon 
those  goods  which  it  can  produce  to  most 
advantage,  and  should  exchange  its  sur- 
plus with  the  surplus  of  other  goods  pro- 
duced by  other  countries.  There  is  no 
use  in  sending  goods  out  of  the  country 
except  in  order  to  get  other  goods  in 
164 


NATIONAL  INDEPENDENCE 

return.  A  butcher  who  is  always  will- 
ing to  part  with  his  meat  but  not  willing 
to  take  bread  from  the  baker,  or  boots 
from  the  bootmaker,  or  clothes  from  the 
tailor,  would  soon  find  himself  in  a  sorry 
plight.  Yet  he  would  be  no  more  foolish 
than  the  protectionist  who  desires  that 
we  should  send  goods  abroad  without  re- 
ceiving payment  in  the  shape  of  goods 
imported  from  abroad. 

The  wage  system  has  made  people 
believe  that  what  a  man  needs  is  work. 
This,  of  course,  is  absurd.  What  he 
needs  is  the  goods  produced  by  work, 
and  the  less  work  involved  in  making  a 
given  amount  of  goods,  the  better.  But 
owing  to  our  economic  system,  every 
economy  in  methods  of  production  en- 
ables employers  to  dismiss  some  of  their 
employees,  and  to  cause  destitution, 
where  a  better  system  would  produce 
only  an  increase  of  wages  or  a  diminu- 
165 


NATIONAL  INDEPENDENCE 

tion  in  the  hours  of  work  without  any 
corresponding  diminution  of  wages. 

Our  economic  system  is  topsyturvy. 
It  makes  the  interest  of  the  individual 
conflict  with  the  interest  of  the  commu- 
nity in  a  thousand  ways  in  which  no  such 
conflict  ought  to  exist.  Under  a  better 
system  the  benefits  of  free  trade  and 
the  evils  of  tariffs  would  be  obvious  to 
all. 

Apart  from  trade,  the  interests  of  na- 
tions coincide  in  all  that  makes  what  we 
call  civilization.  Inventions  and  discov- 
eries bring  benefit  to  all.  The  progress 
of  science  is  a  matter  of  equal  concern 
to  the  whole  civilized  world.  Whether 
a  man  of  science  is  an  Englishman,  a 
Frenchman,  or  a  German  is  a  matter 
of  no  real  importance.  His  discoveries 
are  open  to  all,  and  nothing  but  intel- 
ligence is  required  in  order  to  profit  by 
them.  The  whole  world  of  art  and 
166 


NATIONAL  INDEPENDENCE 

literature  and  learning  is  international; 
what  is  done  in  one  country  is  not  done 
for  that  country,  but  for  mankind.  If 
we  ask  ourselves  what  are  the  things 
that  raise  mankind  above  the  brutes, 
what  are  the  things  that  make  us  think 
the  human  race  more  valuable  than  any 
species  of  animals,  we  shall  find  that 
none  of  them  are  things  in  which  any 
one  nation  can  have  exclusive  property, 
but  all  are  things  in  which  the  whole 
world  can  share.  Those  who  have  any 
care  for  these  things,  those  who  wish  to 
see  mankind  fruitful  in  the  work  which 
men  alone  can  do,  will  take  little  account 
of  national  boundaries,  and  have  little 
care  to  what  state  a  man  happens  to  owe 
allegiance. 

The  importance  of  international  co- 
operation outside  the  sphere  of  politics 
has  been  brought  home  to  me  by  my  own 
experience.    Until  lately  I  was  engaged 
167 


NATIONAL  INDEPENDENCE 

in  teaching  a  new  science  which  few 
men  in  the  world  were  able  to  teach.  My 
own  work  in  this  science  was  based 
chiefly  upon  the  work  of  a  German  and 
an  Italian.  My  pupils  came  from  all 
over  the  civilized  world:  France,  Ger- 
many, Austria,  Russia,  Greece,  Japan, 
China,  India,  and  America.  None  of  us 
was  conscious  of  any  sense  of  national 
divisions.  We  felt  ourselves  an  outpost 
of  civilization,  building  a  new  road  into 
the  virgin  forest  of  the  unknown.  All 
cooperated  in  the  common  task,  and  in 
the  interest  of  such  a  work  the  political 
enmities  of  nations  seemed  trivial,  tem- 
porary, and  futile. 

But  it  is  not  only  in  the  somewhat  rare- 
fied atmosphere  of  abstruse  science  that 
international  cooperation  is  vital  to  the 
progress  of  civilization.  All  our  eco- 
nomic problems,  all  the  questions  of  se- 
curing the  rights  of  labor,  all  the  hopes  of 
168 


NATIONAL  INDEPENDENCE 

freedom  at  home  and  humanity  abroad, 
rest  upon  the  creation  of  international 
good-will. 

So  long  as  hatred,  suspicion,  and  fear 
dominate  the  feelings  of  men  toward 
each  other,  so  long  we  cannot  hope  to 
escape  from  the  tyranny  of  violence  and 
brute  force.  Men  must  learn  to  be  con- 
scious of  the  common  interests  of  man- 
kind in  which  all  are  at  one,  rather  than 
of  those  supposed  interests  in  which  the 
nations  are  divided.  It  is  not  necessary, 
or  even  desirable,  to  obliterate  the  dif- 
ferences of  manners  and  custom  and  tra- 
dition between  different  nations.  These 
differences  enable  each  nation  to  make 
its  own  distinctive  contribution  to  the 
sum  total  of  the  world's  civilization. 

What  is  to  be  desired  is  not  cosmopoli- 
tanism, not  the  absence  of  all  national 
characteristics  that  one  associates  with 
couriers,  wagon-lit  attendants,  and  oth- 
169 


NATIONAL  INDEPENDENCE 

ers,  who  have  had  everything  distinctive 
obliterated  by  multiple  and  trivial  con- 
tacts with  men  of  every  civilized  coun- 
try. Such  cosmopolitanism  is  the  result 
of  loss,  not  gain.  The  international 
spirit  which  we  should  wish  to  see  pro- 
duced will  be  something  added  to  love 
of  country,  not  something  taken  away. 
Just  as  patriotism  does  not  prevent  a 
man  from  feeling  family  affection,  so 
the  international  spirit  ought  not  to  pre- 
vent a  man  from  feeling  affection  for 
his  own  country.  But  it  will  somewhat 
alter  the  character  of  that  affection. 
The  things  which  he  will  desire  for  his 
own  country  will  no  longer  be  things 
which  can  only  be  acquired  at  the  ex- 
pense of  others,  but  rather  those  things 
in  which  the  excellence  of  any  one  coun- 
try is  to  the  advantage  of  all  the  world. 
He  will  wish  his  own  country  to  be  great 
in  the  arts  of  peace,  to  be  eminent  in 
170 


NATIONAL  INDEPENDENCE 

thought  and  science,  to  be  magnanimous 
and  just  and  generous.  He  will  wish  it 
to  help  mankind  on  the  way  toward  that 
better  world  of  liberty  and  international 
concord  which  must  be  realized  if  any 
happiness  is  to  be  left  to  man.  He  will 
not  desire  for  his  country  the  passing 
triumphs  of  a  narrow  possessiveness, 
but  rather  the  enduring  triumph  of  hav- 
ing helped  to  embody  in  human  affairs 
something  of  that  spirit  of  brotherhood 
which  Christ  taught  and  which  the  Chris- 
tian churches  have  forgotten.  He  will 
see  that  this  spirit  embodies  not  only 
the  highest  morality,  but  also  the  truest 
wisdom,  and  the  only  road  by  which  the 
nations,  torn  and  bleeding  with  the 
wounds  which  scientific  madness  has  in- 
flicted, can  emerge  into  a  life  where 
growth  is  possible  and  joy  is  not  ban- 
ished at  the  frenzied  call  of  unreal  and 
fictitious  duties.  Deeds  inspired  by  hate 
171 


NATIONAL  INDEPENDENCE 

• 

are  not  duties,  whatever  pain  and  self- 
sacrifice  they  may  involve.  Life  and 
hope  for  the  world  are  to  be  found  only 
in  the  deeds  of  love. 


172 


Date  Due 


NOV   1    -54 

SPRTPSB 

APR  13  -59 

MAR      8  196$ 

FEB  1  4  1963 

m     * 

'  rcsa" 

MAR  l 

1  1963* 

APR  1 

5  J363 

APR   15 

1963 

Library  Bureau  Cat.  No    1137 


R8 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


A  001  006  128  1 


Russell,  B.R. 

Political  ideals. 


